Sarah Bernhardt as I knew her : the memoirs of

'7

SARAH BERNHARDT AS I KNEW HER

Mme. Bernhardt in her Dressing-room during her Interpretation of
La Gloire, by Maurice Rostand, in 1921.

Photo, Henri Manuel.]

Frontispiece

SARAH BERNHARDT
AS I KNEW HER ::

The Memoirs of Madame Pierre Berton

as told to BASIL WOON :: ::

WITH NINETEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON: HURST & BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.^.

1923

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Mme. Bernhardt in her Dressing-room during her Inter-
pretation of La Gloire, by Maurice Rostand, in 1921

Frontispiece

TO FACE PAGE

Baptismal Certificate of Sarah Bernhardt, May 21st,

1846 30

Sketch of Ther^se Meilhan (afterwards Mme. Pierre Berton)

by Georges Clairin, 1881 - - - - 42

Sarah Bernhardt. One of the best of the earliest pictures 64

Pierre Berton, Husband of Mme. Berton, and one of Sarah's

Earliest Intimate Friends . - - - 102

Sarah Bernhardt in a Scene from La Tosca with Pierre

Berton, when their Romance was at its Height - 112

Sarah Bernhardt in Le Passant - - - - 114

Letter of Congratulation from Victorien Sardou - - 154

Sarah Bernhardt in Caricature - - - - 160
Sarah Bernhardt (aged 30) and her Son, Maurice, on

the only occasion when he acted with her - - 184

Sarah Bernhardt in Theodora - - - - ig6

Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet ----- 202

Sarah Bernhardt in Adrienne Lecouvreur - - - 224

Sarah Bernhardt in Les Bouffons, 1906 - - - 260

Sarah Bernhardt in her Studio Dress - - - 280

Mme. Bernhardt's Sitting-room at her Last Home, 56,

Boulevard Pereire, Paris - - - - 302

INTRODUCTION

Never was more apt the German proverb, " Truth is its own
justification," than in the telling of the story of that most remark-
able of women, Sarah Bernhardt. During her life, in spite of
the fact that she enjoyed more widespread publicity than any
other person, man or woman, remarkably little was known by
the public of her real life story. The very extent of this world-
wide publicity served, in fact, as a sort of smoke-screen to con-
ceal the intimate personality of the woman it vaunted.

To the playgoers of the world, and even to those who had never
seen her act, Sarah Bernhardt was for ever acting a part. She
shared her glory with the dozens of poets and playwrights whose
inspired interpreter she was. The laurel wreath around her
brow was of the same tinsel quality as the scenery which framed
her personality.

To the world, Sarah Bernhardt was the greatest tragedienne
who had ever lived, and that was all. The " all," you will
say, was a very great deal. I grant you that ; but when you
have read this book I think you will say that the title of " great
woman," which Sarah Bernhardt in reality earned, expresses
her true personality far better than that of " greatest actress."

It is hard to begin this work of telling the true, the inti-
mate story of Sarah Bernhardt without laying oneself open
to the charge of revealing secrets that were better left inviolate,
of tearing down rather than building up the laborious character-
structure of an international idol. But I refuse to allow these

vii

. ^ i

viii Introduction

first pages to become a justification— the work itself will be
that. What I am attempting now is simply an explanation.

If, in the course of this book, certain episodes are recounted
that may possibly wound the feelings of those who worshipped
Sarah as an actress, I would point out that the enthraUing story
of her tremendous fight against the worst odds that ever faced
a woman cannot be properly told if certain essential elements
of her history are suppressed. Such elements, despite the
character they seem to convey, are component parts of the
amazing whole. We cannot reveal Bernhardt in her genuine
greatness without revealing also certain things that in a less
important biography had certainly better have been left un-
written.

For seventy-nine years Sarah succeeded in concealing the
facts of her birth. Yet more than thirty years ago she said to
Madame Pierre Bert on, to whose remarkable and faithful memory
the facts of this biography are due, " I hope that, when I am dead,
you, who are younger than I am, will reveal to the world the
real Sarah — the Sarah whom the audiences never knew ! "

From time to time thereafter, throughout their long and
intimate association, Sarah told Madame Berton the facts of her
birth, of her childhood, of her absorbing up-hill battle towards
celebrity and of her final conquest. These facts, together with
matters of Madame Berton's own observation, are contained in
this book.

Scrupulous to a fault, Madame Berton refrained from teUing
or publishing a word of what had been given her in confidence,
until Sarah's death released her from her promise, and at the
same time put her under the immediate obligation of fulfilling

Introduction ix

her old friend's wish and " revealing to the world the Sarah whom
the audiences never knew."

•A word about Madame Berton. She is the widow of Pierre
Berton, the actor and playwright, who, before his marriage to
her, was the adored intimate of Bernhardt. Their liaison, which
is recounted hereafter, lasted two years, and even after they
separated their friendship continued.

It was Berton who convinced Duquesnel, the director of the
Odeon, of Sarah's genius as a tragedienne ; it was Berton who
encouraged her and taught her and who, more than any other
man, was responsible for her early triumphs. It was Berton
who stood beside her when all Paris sneered at and mocked
her, and it was Berton who defended her when the co-directors
of the Odeon wished to cancel her contract because of what they
termed her " incorrigibility." *

No living person, then, can be so fitted to tell Sarah's true
history as the widow of the man who, himself, lived a part of it.

Madame Berton, after her marriage to Berton, accompanied
her husband on many of Sarah's famous tours about Europe.
Even after her marriage, Therese Berton remained Sarah's
confidante and friend, though there were intervals of coldness that
were natural enough in a temperament as self-centred, ajid as
jealous as was Sarah's.

From now on the story will be as Madame Berton related it
to me. I shall let her tell it here just as she told it me in Paris,
in the same simple convincing language, without the addition
of Hterary flourishes or anything that could detract from the
dramatic power of the narrative itself.

BASIL WOON.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER I

For all my intimacy with Sarah Bernhardt (said Madame Berton),
I find it difficult to believe that she loved me. I think that, on
the contrary, she distrusted me, and I even believe that at times
she hated me, because it was I, and not she, who had married
Pierre Berton.

Yet she confided in me. She was at times hard-pressed for
somebody to whom she could tell her secrets. She knew that
I would keep my promise never to relate them during her life-
time, and I know she told them to me because she realised that
one day even the most intimate details of her Hfe would belong
by right to posterity.

This great actress with Jewish, German, French and Flemish
(and probably also Gypsy) blood in her veins, was born into that
condition of life which even to-day spells ruin, hate, despair and
poverty for the great majority. In those days illegitimacy was
almost an insuperable obstacle to recognition and success.

To the fact that the union of her mother and father was

never blessed by holy matrimony may with justice be ascribed

the impunity with which she was assailed during the first forty

or fifty years of her life by all manner of critics, high and low.

No less than three books or pamphlets were WTitten attacking

her before she had attained her fortieth year.

11

12 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Articles in the Parisian press were sometimes so virulent as
to be inconceivable, when it is remembered that the object of
their venom was the world's greatest actress, the " Divine
Sarah." Every blackmailing penny-a-liner in Paris essayed to
make Sarah pay him tribute at some time or another. I do
not think that she ever paid, but I do know that the fits of rage
and despair into which she was thrown after reading these attacks
often made her so ill that for days her understudy was obliged to
play her part.

"Her long fight to keep the truth of her birth from being
published is known. In telliog me one day of the sordid circum-
stances to which she owed her appearance in the world she
pledged me to secrecy during her lifetime. I have kept that
pledge, and it is only because she gave me express permission
to write this book after her death, and because it is time that
the world knew the true story of this extraordinary genius, that
I tell it now. *

The " Divine " Sarah was divine only in her inspiration ;
the " immortal " Sarah was immortal solely in her art. The
real Sarah, the Sarah whom her intimates knew and adored, was
not so much a divinity as an idol ; a woman full of vanity and
frailty, dominated since birth by ambitious egoism and a deter-
mination to become famous.

She was the supreme woman of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries ; but it was not her supremacy or her position
at the pinnacle of theatrical success that made her lovable.
She was loved, not because she was a saint but because she was
not a saint ; for to err is human and to be human is to be loved.
Even on the stage her art was natural- — she did not pose, she lived.

1

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 13

* In the history of the Christian world only one other woman
was born under a greater handicap than was Sarah Bernhardt,
and few women ever rose to a similar fame. Yet Sarah, even
at the height of her career, did things which were justly con-
demned by strict -living people and would not have been tolerated
in anyone else's case.

Consider this woman. She was born to an unwed Jewish
mother whose birth-place was Berlin. Her father was a French
provincial lawyer, a profligate, who afterwards became a world-
traveller.

She was born a Jewess, baptized a Catholic. By birth she
was French, and by marriage she was Greek.

Throughout her life she was, first, an actress ; secondly,
a mother ; thirdly, a great, a tempestuous lover.

She was a sculptress of extraordinary merit ; she was a
painter whose pictures were exhibited in the Paris Salons before
she became famous as an actress ; she was a writer with many
books to her credit,

A temperamental morbidity was, I think, supreme in her
character, although many who knew her placed ambition first.
After these came mother-love, vanity, affection and malice.
She made more enemies than friends ; more people feared her
than loved her ; yet her life was replete with great sentimental
episodes with some of the most famous men of her time.

The happiest period of her life was during the infancy of her
son Maurice ; her greatest joy was in his abiding affection.
The bitterest period of her life was her old age, when she was
surrounded by jackals whose affection for her was chiefly pur-
chased by the money she mistakenly lavished on them ; and

14 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

who reduced her to such a penniless condition that, practically
on her death-bed, she was forced to pose for an American film
company, so that her debts and funeral expenses might in part
be covered.*

Fifty years of constant association taught me the truth about
Sarah Bernhardt. Others might have known her longer, but
none knew her better. None certainly could speak with greater
authority of her intimate life. I had the details of her birth, her
life, and her loves that are here set forth from her own lips, and
from the lips of others who figured in her career.

The first time I met Sarah Bernhardt will live in my memory
for ever. A child of eight, I was taken to visit the actress —
then beginning to taste the first fruits of success — in her loge
at the Odeon Theatre.

I remember my fright as we crossed the vast, cavernous
stage, on our way to the stairs which led to the dressing-rooms.
Enormous pieces of scenery looked as though they might topple
on one at any moment. Cardboard statues, which to my childish
imagination seemed forbidding demons, leered at me from the
shadows. Rough, uncouth scene-shifters, acolytes of this painted
Hades, jostled me as we passed. The great height of the stage,
ending in a gloomy mystery of ropes, pulleys and platforms
which hinted at occult rites, awed me and made me feel smaller
than I really was (and I was very small !).

From time to time voices, bawling from the gloom but whence
exactly I neither knew nor could discover, echoed and re-echoed
through the shadows. The curtain was up, and beyond the darkened
proscenium I could faintly discern the four-storied auditorium,
awesome in its resounding emptiness.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 15

Whom could we be going to visit here, I wondered, and
clung tighter to my mother's protecting skirts, while she inquired
her way of a black-coated gentleman, who appeared with dis-
concerting suddenness as we reached the foot of the stairs. But
I dared not voice the question, and now we mounted a
bewildering number of steps, each bringing a more mysterious
vista than the last.

Finally we reached the top of the stairs and my mother led
me down a long passageway, lined with doors which had once been
painted white but which were now a dirty cream colour. Some
of these doors had simply numbers ; others bore a name inscribed
on a piece of pasteboard, inserted in a metal holder.

Almost at the end of the corridor my mother stopped before
a door precisely similar to the others, except that instead of a
number or a pasteboard it bore the name in golden letters :

SARAH BERNHARDT

Even then the young actress had evinced her preference for gold.
She said that it matched her hair.

Receiving a summons to enter, my mother opened the door
and went in, dragging me resolutely after her. Inside this door
was another, inscribed in like fashion, and when this in turn
was opened, we found ourselves in a large room illuminated by
two windows and shaded lights, for it was winter and the
windows opened on a courtyard.

This room contained a settee, an armchair, two other chairs
and a table, which had three movable mirrors above it. The
table was littered with pots and vases of every description and
a wild confusion of gold-backed brushes and toilet accessories.
A great vase full of carnations stood on it, and another filled

1 6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

with the same flowers was on the floor near one of the windows.
The room was carpeted, but the carpet was so littered with
envelopes, pieces of paper and various articles of wearing apparel
that its design could not be discerned.

Seated before the taUe-de-toilette was an angel.

Let the reader remember that he is dealing with a child's
memory. My imagination had so been wrought upon by the
fearful caverns below that I had fully expected to see, enthroned
here, in the upper chambers, His Majesty Satan in all his glory.
The sight then of this radiant creature, her head literally crowned
with a tumbling glory of gold, came as a tremendous shock —
until I recalled that, although that awful place down below must
have been Hell, we had mounted upwards since then and must
therefore by now have reached Heaven !

As my mother shook hands, I ran behind her and, terror-
stricken at I know not what, hid my face in her ample skirts.
Then, as though from far away, I heard the divinity speak.

" So this is little Therese ! " she said. " Come here, ma
petite, and let Sarah Bernhardt kiss you I "

But I would not go, and only buried my face all the deeper
in my mother's dress.

" Mais, ma mignonne," remonstrated the angel, " I cannot see
you if you hide like that ! Come ! "

My mother, excusably vexed, dragged me from my hiding-
place.

" Come ! come ! " she said sharply ; " speak to Mademoiselle !
Go and kiss her ! "

Thus commanded in a tone I knew too well, I advanced a
step and stood there shyly, not daring to lift my head. Sud-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 17

denly I was overwhelmed by two arms and a mass of golden
hair, which literally covered my head and shoulders as Sarah
Bernhardt caught me to her.

" La pauvre petite . . . la pauvre mignonne ! " she kept
repeating, punctuating the words with hearty hugs and an
embrace on both cheeks. Then, holding me at arm's length :

" So, you want to be an actress ? "

Now this, to my knowledge, was the first occasion on which I
had ever heard that I was to be an actress. Certainly I had never
mentioned the idea to anyone, least of all to my mother, who was
not a person to whom one made confidences. I stood there
dumb.

" Ma foi," ejaculated the angel, in her glorious voice, " she
is pretty enough ! "

There followed a rapid exchange of remarks between my
mother and Sarah Bernhardt-— the connection between whom I
have never been able to fathom— and during these I was ordered
to sit on the chair (my legs did not touch the ground) and told
not to open my mouth. As if I would have dared to ! But I
had become bold enough to feast my eyes on the divinity, and to
study her at leisure.

How easily that first childish impression of Sarah comes to
me now, fifty years later !

Those amazingly blue eyes, widely-spaced ; that arched nose,
a pulse beating in the sensitive nostril as she talked ; that glorious
mouth, full and red, the upper lip slightly projecting over the
under one ; that firm chin, with the dimple that Edmond Ros-
tand afterwards raved about ; those high cheek-bones, the line
of them extending to where the hair covered the ears ; above all,

i8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

that extraordinary mass of unruly golden-red hair, tossed about
in riotous confusion and every direction.

Many another face I might see and forget, this one, never !

When Sarah stood up to say good-bye, I saw that she was
taller than my mother, and unbelievably slender.

As we went downstairs, I was in such an ecstatic state of
bliss that I had not the slightest fear of the gnomes lurking in
the shadows of the nether regions as we passed them again on
our way out, nor do I remember my mother talking to me.

My heart was dedicated to a goddess. Sarah Bernhardt,
from that day onwards, was my idol.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 19

CHAPTER II

What is the truth about Sarah Bernhardt 's birth ? Have I
the right to tell it, even though I know the facts ? Have I the
right to divulge this secret of all secrets, for nearly four-score
years locked in the breast of the greatest woman of five epochs ?
Who am I that I should venture into the cupboards of the dead
Great for the purpose of rattling the skeletons I am certain to
find there' — yes, in the cupboards of all the dead great ones
who later surrounded this celebrated woman, and not alone
Bernhardt ?

I have faced this problem squarely, fought it out with myself
through long, sleepless nights, when publishers were bedevilling
me for the truth, the whole truth and' — scarcely anything but the
truth. It is a problem that will raise a sharp conflict in the
feelings of all my readers. It is a problem for Poe.

Have I the right' — knowing what I do of the real circumstances
surrounding not only the dead genius but her living relatives
alsO' — have I the right to tear the shroud from that dead face,
and let the world gaze afresh on a long-familiar visage, only to
find a new and wondrously changed entity beneath ?

I will be frank. I had made up my mind not to do it : not
for fear of giving offence to the dead, for 'twas from this very
glorious clay that I had the truth with permission to publish it,
but from respect to the living. Sarah Bernhardt not only left

20 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

a son, Maurice Bernhardt ; she left grandchildren and great-
grandchildren, little ones whom I have watched joyously at play
in the Pare Monceau, unknowing that at that very moment the
great battle for life was being staged in the drab little house on
the Boulevard Pereire. She had made up her mind that the
sorrows which were hers should never blemish these innocent ones.

And yet' — what a fallacy, what a heartrending fallacy it is
to believe that such things can be concealed, or that, being con-
cealed, they do not fester in their hiding-places !

Scarcely had the last, sad curtain been rung down on that
greatest of real-life dramas than the scavengers of literature —
those grisly people who lurk in the night of life, dealing in calumny
and lieS' — began delving into the past of Sarah Bernhardt, just
as the real chiffoniers, those horrible old women of the dawn,
delve into the dustbins of Paris, seeking for Heaven knows what
filth.

The mystery of her birth was Sarah's great secret. Insati-
able, the greedy public desired to rend this secret and to tear it
into little bits. Literary ghouls fell upon the great woman's
reputation and fought over it. They disinterred legends that
Sarah, while living, had successfully and scornfully proved untrue.
They sent out lies by the bushel, secure in the knowledge that
the Golden Voice, which alone could brand them, was stilled
for ever.

Perhaps it was to be expected that the first of these legends
came from Germany, a country that Sarah scorned and once
refused to visit, although she had been offered a miUion marks to
do so ; a country, moreover, which had claimed Sarah as its own
on more than one occasion.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 21

In 1902 the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger published a " revelation "
of the birth of Sarah Bernhardt. She was born, said the inspired
writer, at Frankfort. Her father was a German, her mother a
Fleming. She had been taken to France when a tiny child and
there abandoned by her parents.

" We are aware," said the Lokal Anzeiger, " that Sarah herself
claims to have been bom in Paris. Our only retort to this is :
let her produce her birth certificate ! "

They knew, of course, that Sarah's birth was never registered.
Later I will tell you why.

Sarah Bernhardt was interviewed about these statements at
the time they were published. As always, she refused to comment
on the extraordinary story, and contented herself with referring
inquiring journalists to her Memoirs, entitled " Ma Double Vie,"
which had been published some years before.

In these Memoirs Sarah told an infinitesimal fraction of the
truth. She said that she was born on October 22, 1844, at number
5, rue de I'Ecole de Medecine, in Paris. This was the only
mention she made of the circumstances of her birth, and it was
true.

Now comes George Bernhardt, a famous German, who ought
to know better than to pander to the scandal-mongers, and who
states positively that Sarah's father was his great-grandfather,
George Bernhardt, and that her mother was a Gypsy woman
for whom he experienced a temporary passion while hving in
Algeria.

But here he hedges. " At least," he says, " family records
tell of the existence of the child, and of the allegation that George
Bernhardt was the father ; but they also say that the assertion

22 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

was denied by him, which leads to the probabiUty that Sarah
Bernhardt had no claim whatever on the name she bore,"

Frankfort, and now Algiers ! A Flemish mother and a
Gypsy mother ! A fine haul for the scavengers !

Sarah had to fight rumours of this kind on several occasions
during her lifetime. In a scurrilous book which was written many
years ago it was asserted that she " never knew who her father
was."

This, as might be expected, was untrue. Sarah not only
knew who her father was, but knew him well. Though she never
lived with him, he visited her frequently, especially when she
was at school in the Convent at Grandchamps, and when he died
he left her a portion of his fortune.

Sarah herself starts her Memoirs with this reference to him :
" My father was travelling in China at the time — why, I do not
know."

Here, then, was the answer to the problem that had been
bothering me : it was clearly better to tell the truth once and
for all, and to set at rest all doubts concerning this much-debated
question of Sarah Bernhardt's birth, than to let every newspaper
scavenger have his own way with it, prolong the agony, and
incidentally contrive, by unscrupulous inference, to cast a
shadow much blacker than the importance of the matter justified.

To aid me in coming to this decision I had the knowledge
that Sarah herself, in telling the story to me many years ago, was
aware that one day it would be made public, and wished things
so. She knew that in time to come she would belong to history,
and also how little of historv is founded on actual fact. The
last thing she wanted was for the facts of her life to be at the

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 23

mercy of imaginative chroniclers, who would have nothing to
base their story on except rumour.

Thus she told it to me, and thus I tell it to you. Let the
world decide.

24 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER III

No. 5, rue de I'Ecole de Medecine was a weird, queerly-leaning
tenement house in a black little side-street just off the Boule-
vard St. Germain, near the Boulevard St. Michel, in the heart
of the students' quarter of Paris. It was a poor dwelling, at
best, with a crumbling fagade, ornamented with some scarcely-
discernible heraldic device which told of past dignity. It had
a low, wide doorway, with one of its great oak, iron-studded doors
askew on its hinges, so that a perpetual draught whistled up the
stone-flagged corridor that loomed darkly, like a cave, from the
street to the crumbling stairs. A four-story building . . . each
floor was just a trifle more weather-beaten, more decrepit, than
the next. On the ground floor, next to the loge du concierge,
was a wineshop, smelling of last night's slops, where the brown-
aproned proprietor leaned against his little wooden bar and filled
new bottles with the dregs that had not been drunk the day
before ; next to the wineshop stood a cobbler's stall, with the
tap-tap of the cobbler's wooden mallet resounding through the
street to the courtyard at the rear ; and next to the cobbler's,
the stall of a marchand des frites, whose only merchandise was
sliced potatoes fried in olive oil.

On the first floor was the appartement of the wine-dealer ;
on the second and third, logements for students' — students who,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 25

returning nightly from the cafes of the Boul' Mich', enhvened the
aged edifice with their cries.

And on the fourth floor of this building, on this twenty-
second day of October, 1844, in a modest fiat of three rooms —
bedroom, sitting-room and kitchen- — was born the baby who
afterwards became Sarah Bernhardt.

Her mother, then a beautiful young woman in her late teens,
was named Julie Bernard, but sometimes she called herself
Judith Van Hard. Among her intimates she was affectionately
known as Youle.

It was eight o'clock at night. Youle was lying in bed, her
mass of red-gold hair tumbling over her shoulders and down
under the sheets. Her eyes of sapphire-blue were closed, and her
breathing hard and spasmodic. Her features were drawn ; her
face pale.

Three other persons were in the room. One was a man^ —
the doctor, busy packing up his instruments. The other was a
young friend, Madame Guerard. The third was a tiny atom of
humanity, barely a foot long and weighing certainly not more
than half a dozen pounds. This infant's head was covered with
a fuzz of reddish hair resembling the mother's ; its tiny mouth
was open and its little lungs were working at top-blast.

The temper for which Sarah Bernhardt was later to become
notorious was making its first manifestation.

The delivery had been difficult, and Julie was not asleep but
unconscious. Thus, though the baby cried all night, the mother
did not awaken, and in the morning Mme. Guerard sent off to the
nearest synagogue for a Jewish priest.

But when the doctor came the crisis had passed ; the

26 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

girl on the bed had recovered consciousness and was already
fondling her child. From then on her recovery was rapid, and
before little Sarah had properly got her blue eyes open or begun
to take an interest in things around her, the beautiful httle Jewish
girl was back at her work-table in the sitting-room, trimming hats
for which she was paid a few sous each by the clients whose
houses she visited in turn every week.

*Julie Van Hard, or Bernard, was a Flemish Jewess born of
a strugghng lower-middle-class family in BerHn. Her father,
originally from South Holland but a naturalised German, had
worked in a circus, but had forsaken this occupation to go into
the retail grain and seed business, first in Hanover and then in
Berlin. Her mother was a German dressmaker and a great beauty.
When JuUe was thirteen, her father died and left her only a hand-
ful of marks with which to complete her education.

Instead of doing so she chose to leave school, and became an
apprentice in a big Berlin millinery establishment. ' After working
there a little more than a year, she fell in love with a non-com-
missioned officer in a cavalry regiment, who seduced and then
callously left her. When the affair came to the ears of the girl's
employer, she was discharged in disgrace.

After that she left Berhn and went to Frankfort, where she
kept herself for a few months by making hats (at which she was
very clever) and singing on occasion in cafes-concert. She was
a lovely child, even in the poor dresses she could afford, and
having a talent for music, had been taught the piano by her
mother. She displayed, however, httle of the great histrionic
ability which was to develop in her daughter. In fact, Sarah
Bernhardt never completely satisfied herself from which side of

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 27

the family she derived her talent. Her father's relations, from
what httle she learned of them, were comfortable, mediocre middle-
class people in the French provinces — with German or Dutch
connections, to be sure, but with no " acting blood " as far as she
could discover.

The Van Hard family, however, was an offshoot of the Kins-
berger clan, who owned circuses and theatres in Northern Europe
before Napoleon's day, and who later developed into wholesale
dealers in grain. When Napoleon invaded Poland, in fact, a
Kinsberger supplied him with grain for his horses. The exact
relationship of this Kinsberger to Sarah she never properly knew,
but he was probably a cousin of her grandfather.

Away back therefore in this maternal line, there probably
existed someone with a talent for the theatre. Whether the
ancestor in question ever used it is not on record. We know that
her grandfather was a performer in a Dutch circus, but we do
not know whether he was a clown or an animal-tamer.

Tn Frankfort, Julie Bernard, the modiste, met a young
Frenchman, a courier in the diplomatic corps, and a wild love
affair followed, which culminated in the girl following the young
man to Paris. * There they continued their liaison for less than
a month, however, since the courier's parents, people of noble
birth, stepped in and forbade him ever to see the little German
girl again. He left her without warning, and without money.
For weeks afterwards little Julie, a stranger in a strange land
and speaking little French, lived as best she might. Paris is a
hard city now, for the unprotected girl ; it was harder then.
Often the German waif came perilously near starvation. Once,
according to a story that she later on in life related to Jeanne, her

28 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

second daughter, who told it to Sarah, she tried to commit
suicide by throwing herself under the wheels of a passing coach.
But she had misjudged the distance and the wheels passed within
inches of her.

What she did to eke out a bare living in those terrible days
we do not know. It is unlikely that she ever confided the whole
story to her daughters' — even to Jeanne, her favourite. What
is known is that she continued to make hats whenever she could
save sufficient sous to buy the material, and perhaps she sang
or danced in the cabarets of the quarter ; but this is unlikely,
because of her ignorance of French. Whatever she did, no one
now can blame her.

Eventually, she struck up an acquaintance with a law student,
who was registered on the books of the University of Paris as
Edouard Bernhardt. The family name of this man, according
to what Sarah learned later, was de Therard, and his baptismal
name was " Paul."'.

The exact reasons for the dual nomenclature I cannot give.
Sarah herself knew of the matter only vaguely. I suggested that
de Therard was the student's right name, but that he carried on
his liaison with Julie under the name of Bernhardt. Sarah
admitted this was a plausible inference, but insisted that
the attorney for her father's estate always referred to him as
Bernhardt.

Bernhardt, or de Therard, was one of the wildest youngsters
in the Latin Quarter. He was constantly getting into scrapes^
which his family at Le Havre had to pay for. Many of these
scrapes were with women much older than himself, and I'aventure
amour euse was probably his strong' — or weak- — point. At any

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 29

rate, he succeeded in studying as little law as possible, for he
failed completely in all his examinations.

Where he and Julie met is unknown ; probably it was a
simple rencontre de la rue, which is common enough in Paris to-day.
The nature of Julie's trade, when delivering her hats to her
customers, took her frequently into the streets of the quarter in
which young Bernhardt was studying and in which he prosecuted
his love affairs. It is likely that, seeing a marvellously pretty
girl (of a type then unusual in Paris) , walking along the Boul' Mich' ,
he followed her and, being of the handsome, devil-may-care type,
pleased her so that she agreed to meet him again.

Be that as it may, the link between the little German girl and
the reckless Havre student soon became public enough. Their
appearance in any of the cafes or cabarets of the quarter was the
signal for a chorus of congratulations and ironical greetings
from Bernhardt's comrades.

The little flat at Number 5, rue de I'Ecole de Medecine, was
furnished and rented by Bernhardt for Julie, out of his slender
student's purse.

Two weeks before the birth of his child, Bernhardt returned
to Havre.

He wrote ardent letters to the forsaken mother and sent
regular sums for the child's support. Sometimes he visited
Paris, but rarely remained there longer than twenty-four hours.
As his financial circumstances improved, for relatives bequeathed
him fairly large sums, he began to travel, and before his first
voyage, to Portugal, he suggested that the infant Sarah should be
sent to his own old nurse, now become a professional dry-nurse,
with a farm near Quimperle, in Brittany.

30 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

About this time Julie's fortunes underwent a sudden change
for the better. This came about through several circumstances
which occurred within a few weeks of each other. First, a
relative of the young girl died in Holland, and bequeathed to her
and each of her three sisters an equal number of guelders. The
sum was not large, but it sufficed to lift Julie above immediate
want. She went to Holland to claim the money, and was gone
six months.

A few days after the legacy reached her, she discovered to
her astonishment that one of her sisters, Rosine, who was her
elder by four years and who was supposedly in Marseilles, was in
reality living in Paris. How she was living is rather a mystery.
But she seemed to be well off, and she had been long enough in
France to speak the language excellently.

When Julie returned from Holland, she came by way of Berlin
and brought with her Henriette, her younger sister, then aged
thirteen. There was still another sister, two years younger, and
another aged twenty-eight, who was married and who lived in the
French West Indies.

Julie and Henriette, when they arrived in Paris, went to live
with Rosine, who had a flat in Montmartre. With baby Sarah
safely in the country, in charge of a capable nurse, and with
funds for the child's upkeep provided by the father, Julie felt
free to look around.

She was a remarkable woman by this time. Eighteen years
old, very fair, with a marvellous complexion and the wonder-
ful head of hair that was to make her renowned later on, Julie
Bernard possessed a gay and careless disposition that would have
made her notorious anywhere. With her sisters, she began

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Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 31

frequenting the cafes that were then fashionable, and it was not
long before the trio began to meet interesting people.

Among these acquaintances was a man whom Sarah herself
always referred to as " Baron Larrey," but who was probably
another man of title with a similar name. Baron Larrey and
Julie became first friends, then lovers, and the relationship
lasted five years.

Far behind her now the dingy, decrepit old building at
5, rue de I'Ecole de Medecine ! Far behind her the days when she
had to trudge weary miles, in all weathers, to secure orders and
deliver hats ! Julie was now a " fille a la mode." She flaunted the
latest fashions, the latest colours, the latest millinery on the
Boulevards and in the exclusive restaurants. Her relationship
with the Baron commanded for her a certain respect in the gay,
care-free Bohemian world that was the Paris of 1845. Nobles at
Court commenced to be interested in her. Famous personages
of the stage consented to sit at her table.

She soon eclipsed in beauty and in accomplishments her
less endowed sisters, although they too formed wealthy and
prominent relationships.

All three sisters loved to travel. Julie took the younger one
on many voyages throughout Europe, and Rosine made regular
pilgrimages to Germany to the famous spas.

While Julie lived the gay, irresponsible life of a Parisian
butterfly, her daughter Sarah, a weak, anaemic child, cursed with
a terrific temper, remained on the farm in Brittany.

When she was nearly two years old she was still in her " first
steps " ; she did not begin to learn to walk until she was fourteen
months old. Her nurse, who had married again, had other duties

32 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

about the farm and could give scant attention to the little one
during the day. In order to keep her quiet, the nurse got her
husband to build a little chair, in which the baby was fastened
with a strap. This was then pushed against a table, so that the
child could amuse herself with pieces of coloured paper — the
only toys Sarah Bernhardt knew until she was three years old.

One day the woman set her in the chair as usual but neglected
to fasten the strap, and the baby, leaning forward to catch some-
thing, fell from the high chair and into the wide, Breton fireplace,
in which a log fire was burning. Her screams brought the nurse
and her husband running. The nurse picked her up and plunged
her bodily, flaming clothes and all, into a huge tub of milk which
was waiting to be churned.

Doctors were sent for from a neighbouring village and hasty
messages sent to Paris. The only one of the sisters to be found
was Rosine, who sent a message to Julie at Brussels, and herself
hurried to Brittany. Four days later Julie arrived in Baron
Larrey's coach, which had been driven at top speed all the way
from Paris.

From this incident grew Sarah's nickname, which remained
with her all her childhood, " Flower-of-the-Milk." She was
three months recovering from the severe burns she had sustained,
and until she died she bore scars to remind her of the accident.

'For ever after, Sarah Bernhardt had a horror of fire. She
could not bear even to look at one, and would shiver and turn
pale when she heard the trumpets and bells of the fire brigade.
Yet mother-love conquered this fear when, nearly twenty years
later, her flat took fire and she dashed through a barrage of flames
to rescue her own baby boy.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 33

* When little Sarah recovered, Julie proposed to the nurse,
now a widow, that she should leave the Breton farm and hve in
Paris in a cottage Baron Larrey had taken on the borders of the
Seine, at Neuilly. The nurse agreed, and a new existence began
for the child on the fringe of the city, where her mother was
earning a reputation as a gilded social butterfly. '

/

34 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER IV

During the year which followed transfer of nurse and child to
Neuilly-sur-Seine Sarah saw her mother but once, and then merely
by chance.

Returning from a gay court party near St. Germain the coach,
in which Julie was travelling with a resplendent personage the
Comte de Tours, broke down just after it had crossed the bridge
over the Seine and reached the outskirts of Neuilly. The nearest
coach-builder was a mile distant, and while the coachman walked
this distance, Julie bethought herself of the neglected child
living only a few streets away. So she and the Count daintily
picked their way to the cottage, and found Sarah revelling in
her bi-weekly bath.

This bath was an extraordinary affair, because it took place in
the same tub as the family washing- — and probably other washing
that the nurse solicited in order to eke out her income. On
the principle of killing two birds with one stone, the nurse would
make a warm tub of soap-suds, put the linen to be washed into it,
and then hoist in baby Sarah !

The sight amused the Count and infuriated Julie, who gave
the nurse a sound scolding. Sarah was hastily taken from the
tub, dried, clothed and then handed to her fastidious mother,
who fondled her in a gingerly way. But the baby failed to recog-
nise the mother who had sacrificed so little for her sake, and burst

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 35

into a storm of tears, pounding the finely-dressed lady with her
puny little fists.

The Count thought it a fine joke, and laughed uproariously.
" She is just like her mother, Youle ! " he remarked, twirling
his fine moustache.

Julie handed her tempestuous child back to the nurse,

" If that is the way she behaves when her mother comes to
see her," she said, " I shall not come again."

She kept her word to such good purpose that, eighteen months
later, when the nurse married for a third time, and desired
to take the child with her to her new home, letters to Julie's
address were returned undelivered. The errant mother had not
even thought it worth her while to keep her child's nurse informed
of her movements.

The nurse's new husband was a concierge, one of those indis-
pensable people who open the doors of Paris buildings, lose letters,
clean stairs, quarrel with flat-owners, and generally make them-
selves as much of a nuisance as possible. This particular speci-
men was a big, upstanding man with sandy hair, about forty
years of age, or ten years younger than his bride.

He was then concierge at Number 65, rue de Provence, in
the heart of Paris, near where the Galeries Lafayette, the great
stores, now stand. It was a dingy building, mostly devoted to
commerce, and the concierge occupied one room on the first floor.
This one room was bedroom, sitting-room and kitchen combined.

There was only one bed, a big four-poster, jammed against
the window. There was also one kitchen table, on which he ate
his meals ; two chairs in varying stages of decrepitude ; a small
coal stove screened from the bed by a heavy velvet curtain —

36 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

soiled legacy of some opulent tenant' — and another small table,
on which stood a wash-basin and pail. When water was wanted
it was necessary to fetch it from a pump in the street.

It was into this sordid environment that little Sarah, " Flower-
of-the-Milk," now almost five years old, was brought willy-nilly
by her foster-mother. There was no room to put a cot for
the child, so she shared a fraction of the bed. She was quickly
put to work by her new lord, who soon initiated her into the
mysteries of floor-washing and door-knob polishing, while it
was generally la petite Sarah, when water was wanted, who was
commissioned to stagger down the stairs with the empty pail
and return with the full one.

Living with two adults in this ill-ventilated, badly-lighted
room — the sole window was one about twice the size of a ship's
port-hole — and forced to do work which might well have proved
too much for a child twice her age, it is small wonder that Sarah
was frequently ill.

She lost appetite and colour, and grew weak, while the anaemia,
which the bracing air of the country had almost cured, returned.
Her eyes grew listless and had large puffs under them, so that
neighbours, who pitied the child, prophesied that her days would
soon be over.

Her only playmate, almost as unhappy as herself, was another
httle girl named Titine, the daughter of a working jeweller, who
lived on the floor above ; her playgrounds were the busy streets
of Paris ; her language the argot of the slums. No one dreamed
of sending her to school, which was not then compulsory.

There is very little doubt that the world would never have
known Sarah Bernhardt if this state of affairs had lasted another

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 37

year. The child was fast going into tuberculosis, and could not
even summon strength for the fits of temper that had distinguished
her up till this time.

I have said that her only playmate was Titine, the daughter of
the jeweller, but there was another for a month or so — the son
of the butcher at the street corner.

One afternoon the janitor's wife returned from an errand and
heard screams coming from the loge. Hastening there she dis-
covered the butcher's son, aged six, stripped to the waist, and the
diminutive Sarah laying on to him with a strap.

" I am playing at being a Spaniard," she said in explanation,
Spaniards having then a great reputation in France for cruelty.
The incident is interesting in the light of later incidents in her
career, when charges of callousness and cruelty were brought
against her. For myself I have never doubted that a streak of
the primitive existed in Sarah. But, unlike others, I believe that
she was the better for it, for out of it grew her single-mindedness
and her will to conquer.

During all this time Sarah's mother gave no sign of life,
despite repeated efforts on the part of the old nurse to find her.
In fact, the child's board had not been paid for nearly two years
and, with her delicate health, she was becoming a charge which
the couple could ill afford. Deliverance from this state of affairs
came unexpectedly. One day Rosine, Sarah's aunt, paid a visit
to a neighbouring house. Sarah, who was playing in the court-
yard of the building at the moment her aunt arrived, immediately
recognised her, although the two had not met for more than a
year.

" Tante Rosine ! Tante Rosine ! "

38 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

The extravagantly dressed woman turned, hardly believing
her ears.

" It is not ?• — why, it is Sarah, the daughter of my sister
Youle ! "

" Yes, yes ! It is I, Sarah ! Oh, take me away^ — take me
away ! They suffocate me, these walls^ — always walls ! I cannot
see the sky ! Take me away ! I want to see the sky again, and
the flowers. . . ! "

Sarah's cries had attracted a crowd, and much confused Rosine
hurried the child into the concierge's room, and was there over-
whelmed by the old nurse's explanations.

Something seemed to tell Sarah that she was not to be taken
away at that moment.

" Oh, take me with you— take me with you ! I shall die
here ! "

It was the cry of a desperate child fighting for her life, and it
visibly wrenched at the heart of Tante Rosine. Yet' — take her
with her ? How could she ? What would her friend, the com-
panion whom she lived with and who paid for her fine gowns and
hats, say, if she brought home this little child of the gutter ?

" Well," she conceded, as the woe-begone child clung con-
vulsively to her skirt, " I wiU come back to-morrow, and take
you away."

But with that curious intuition that characterises most
children, Sarah sensed that she was about to be abandoned for a
third time. She flung herself on the bed, sobbing, as her nurse
accompanied her aunt down the stairs to the street below, where
a fine equipage of boxwood and plush, prancing horses and liveried
footmen was in waiting.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 39

Rosine got into her carriage, dabbing a lace handkerchief at
her eyes. She had a tender heart and was firmly resolved to
write to Youle at once — Julie was in London — and make her take
her child.

The footman regained his seat, the coachman clucked to his
horses and the equipage moved away. But before it had gone two
feet there was a heartrending wail and shriek, followed by a
chorus of affrighted shouts, and a body came hurtling past the
coach to the pavement. It was Sarah. The child had attempted
to jump from the tiny first-floor window into the coach as it
passed.

When Sarah awoke she found herself in a great, clean bed,
surrounded by kind faces. She was at the home of her aunt in
the rue St. Honore. She had a double fracture of her right arm,
and a sprained left ankle.

Julie, who was sent for immediately, arrived three days later,
together with numerous other members of Sarah's family. For
the first time in her brief existence, Sarah found herself a person
of importance.

For the next two years little Sarah was an invalid, capable of
walking only a step or two at a time. She passed this period
sitting in a great arm-chair, unable to move without pain, dream-
ing childish dreams of splendour for the future.

" Never once," said Sarah in speaking of this period to me,
" did I include in those dreams a suspicion that I would one day
be an actress. I had never seen the inside of a theatre, and al-
though many actors and actresses were among the friends con-
stantly in and out of my mother's home at 22, rue de la Micho-
difere — a rather meretriciously furnished flat with gilded salons

40 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

and musty bedrooms — I was shy with them and they with me,
and learned httle from their conversation.

" In fact, the stage and all appertaining to it remained a deep
mystery to me for nearly ten years after my accident. My
actual going on the stage was an accident — or rather the solu-
tion of a problem which had worried my mother almost to
death."

How this came about will be described in a later chapter.

At seven years of age, Sarah Bernhardt had so far recovered
that she could walk and move without difficulty, and there was
serious discussion about sending her to school. Her volatile
mother, absent for the most part during Sarah's convalescence,
nevertheless resented the presence of the child in her home
as irksome, and chafed to place her where she would be in
good hands and could do without maternal supervision and
attention.

As a matter of fact, at the age of seven Sarah could neither
read nor write, and had never heard of arithmetic !

When her mother explained that she was to go to live in a
place where there were hundreds of other little girls, who were to
become her playmates, Sarah was overjoyed. During the terrible
two years when she could not run about like other children,
Sarah had had no playmates whatever ; and, during her airings
in her mother's or her aunt's carriage, had often wistfully watched
other and luckier little girls rolling hoops along the gravelled paths
of the Champs Elysees, or in the fields which then fringed what
is now the Boulevard de Clichy. She had been an intensely
lonely child from her infancy and could scarcely contain her
happiness at the thought that at last she was to be as other

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 41

children, and have httle friends with whom she could talk and play
as an equal.

Probably the main reason for sending Sarah away at this
juncture was the fact that Julie was again about to become a
mother.

It may be as well to state here that Julie Bernhardt was the
mother of four children including a boy who died. Sarah was the
first, Jeanne the second, and Regine the third. More will be told
hereafter concerning these two turbulent sisters of the actress.
They both lived unfortunate lives and died still more unfortunate
deaths,

A report of Sarah's parentage that has won considerable
credence was published by a weekly Paris newspaper in 1886,
and re-published again as recently as April 8, 1923, by La Rampe,
a Paris theatrical paper, I quote from the latter :

" Edouard Bernhardt, grandfather of Sarah Bernhardt, was
a Jew. He fulfilled the functions of chief ocuHst to the Court of
Austria. He came to St. Aubin-du-Corbier, in Brittany, and
there married the Marquise de la Thieul6 du Petit-Bois de la
Vieuville, by whom he had four daughters and one son : Julie,
Rosine, Agathe, Vitty and Edouard. The Marquise died and
Edouard Bernhardt married, secondly, Madame Van Berinth,
who had been governess to his children. Rosine and Juhe
(mother of Sarah Bernhardt) ran away to Havre, where they
obtained work as saleswomen in a confectionery establishment.
Their father sent for them, and they fled to London. Shortly
afterwards they returned to Havre, where Julie lived as the wife
of a man named Morel, a ship-builder. They had fourteen

42 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

children, of whom Sarah, born at Paris, 125, Faubourg St.
Honor^, on October 23, 1840, was one."

This seems circumstantial but it is absolutely inaccurate.
I give it here, together with the evidence to contravert it, because
so many people believe the above to be the true story of Sarah's
birth.

The rebutting evidence consists, first, in Sarah's own denial,
which was published almost immediately after the story itself,
and, secondly, in the fact that the certificate of her baptism,
in which the truth was certainly given, states that she was born,
not in the Faubourg St. Honore, but in the rue de I'Ecole de
Medecine— not on October 23, 1840, but on October 22, 1844 ;
that her father was not " Monsieur Morel," but George Bernhardt ;
and that her mother was not " Julie Bernhardt " but Juhe Van
Hard.

And, as I have said, Julie had only four children, not
fourteen !

The same paper {La Rampe) says that Sarah was baptised
at the age of eight years. When she was eight, Sarah was still
a Jewess and at the school of which we shall shortly give an
account. Sarah was baptised, under the name of Rosine, five
years later, at the Grandchamps Convent, Versailles.

When she was seven, then, and five months before Jeanne
was born, Sarah was taken to Madame Fressard's school, at
18, rue Boileau, Auteuil. The building still exists, but it has
been turned into a private sanatorium.

The journey to Auteuil, which one can now make from the
rue St. Honor^ in twenty minutes by underground railway or

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Sketch of Therese Meilhan (afterwards Mme. Pierre Berton) by

Georges Clairin, 1881.

p. 42.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 43

in half an hour by tramway or motor-bus, was then quite a
formidable affair. Paris was left behind at the Avenue Montaigne,
and from there the way lay along the banks of the smihng Seine,
with only a roadside estaminet bordering what is now one of the
most aristocratic streets of aU Paris. It took over an hour for
the coach to reach the rue Boileau, in the little village of Auteuil.
Sarah, needless to say, was enchanted with the journey and with
the happy prospects ahead of her.

It was quite a ceremony, the installation of Sarah in her
new home. Besides Julie and Aunt Rosine, there was a General
and another man, who represented Sarah's father, then absent
in Lisbon. They were very pompous and important, and inclined
to exaggerate the wealth that was so evident in the rich trappings
of Aunt Rosine's coach.

After much talk and negotiation, during which the party
gathered around a bottle of wine opened by Madame Fressard,
Sarah was formally entered on the books of the school as a pupil.

Amongst other things Julie insisted on presenting Madame
Fressard with eight large jars of cold cream, with which she gave
orders that Sarah was to be massaged every morning. Another
order concerned Sarah's mass of curly hair. It was not to be
cut or trimmed in any way, but to be carefully combed night and
morning. And when Madame Fressard ventured a slight protest
at all these injunctions, Julie only waved her hand with a large
gesture, saying :

" You will be paid — her father is wealthy ! "

The exact sum contributed by George Bernhardt towards
Sarah's maintenance was four thousand francs annually.

During aU the conversation that attended her installation

44 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

as a pupil at the Auteuil school, Sarah remained mute, too shy
to say a word.

" What a stupid child ! " said Aunt Rosine, who was years
before she gained a very high opinion of Sarah.

" Naturally stupid, I'm afraid ! " sighed her mother, languidly.

Only Madame Fressard, the stranger in the group, came to
the forlorn little creature's aid :

" Well, she has your eyes — so intelligent, madame ! " she
said.

And with this the party left in their flamboyant coach, each
scrupulously kissing the child farewell at the gate, and each,
without any doubt at all, exceedingly glad to be rid of her.

Sarah was at last at school.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 45

CHAPTER V

In later years it was fairly well known amongst theatrical people
that Sarah was subject to " stage fright." The only occasion
however on which nerves actually stopped her performance,
occurred at Auteuil school, when she was eight years and three
months old. Sarah told this story to me on one memorable day
at Ville d'Avray, when, during a fete given by the Grand Duke
Peter of Russia, we had stolen away from the crowd into Belle vue
woods. I have never seen the incident referred to in print.

" I had been at the school a little more than a year," Sarah
told me, " when it was decided to give a performance of Clotilde,
a play for children, which concerned a little girl's adventures in
fairyland. Stella Colas, afterwards the wife of Pierre de Corvin,
was cast for the name part. Another httle fair girl (whose
name I have forgotten) was to play the role of Augustine, the
partner of Clotilde. And I was cast for the part of the Queen of
the Fairies.

" At the rehearsals — we rehearsed all the winter— everything
went well. My part was not an important one, but it involved
some pretty realistic acting in the second act, when the Queen
of the Fairies dies of mortification on hearing Clotilde affirm
that the fairies do not really exist. This was the first ' death
scene ' in which I ever acted. •

" I wore wings, of course, and many rehearsals were neces-

46 Sarah Bernhardt As I Knew Her

sary before the stage-manager, who was our kindergarten
teacher, could get me to fall without breaking them. Finally I
learned the part, and managed to do it to the entire satisfaction
of everyone.

" When the great night came, we were, of course, all very
nervous, myself most of all, for my mother and two aunts had
written that they would be present accompanied by no less a
personage than the Due de Morny, then considered to be the
power behind Napoleon the Third's throne.

" Before the curtain went up, my knees were knocking to-
gether and I felt a wild desire to fly. I tried to run away and
hide, in fact, but the teacher found me, petted me and made me
promise to go on with the part.

" I had nothing to do until the end of the fu-st act, when
Clotilde and Augustine fall asleep at the foot of a great tree and
dream of the fairies. My part was to descend from the tree,
assisted by unseen wires, float to the middle of the stage, and then
pronounce the words : ' On demande la reine des reves ? Me
void ! ' {' They want the Queen of Dreams ? Here I am ! ')

" Clotilde and Augustine fell asleep, and trembling all over I
floated down and advanced to the front of the stage. We had
no regular footlights, and everyone in the little auditorium could
be distinguished from the stage.

" Instead of pronouncing the sentence about the Queen of
Dreams, I stood tongue-tied, unable to utter a syllable. Several
times my mouth opened, and I tried to speak, but the words would
not come. All the time I was anxiously searching the audience
for familiar faces. It was only when I saw none, and realised
that my mother was not present, that I managed to stutter :

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 47

" ' On d-d-dem-m-m-mande la reine d-des rives ? M-m-me
void ! '

" The last word I uttered in one breathless syllable ; then
rushed off the stage to the accompaniment of much amused
applause.

" In the wings of the tiny stage I was met by the principal
of the school, who, affecting not to notice my embarrassment,
complimented me warmly on my ' success,' and then told me that
my mother and her party had not arrived. This, more than any-
thing else, gave me the necessary courage to go through with
my part.

" Even in later years when I was on the regular stage, the
presence of my mother in an audience invariably made me so
nervous that I could hardly play. She was ever the harshest
critic I had !

" The second act proceeded fairly well, since it was chiefly a
dance by the fairies, with myself in the centre, wielding a mystic
sceptre. All I had to do was wave the sceptre, and the fairies
would bow as it was raised and lowered. Finally came the big
moment when Clotilde awakens, and says : ' Pshaw, I was dream-
ing ; there are no such things as fairies ! '

" With these words I was supposed to stop and wave my
sceptre indignantly, on which all the other fairies disappeared,
leaving me alone with Clotilde and the sleeping Augustine. Clo-
tilde advances to me and asks : ' Who are you ? ' To my reply
' I am the Queen of the Fairies,' she answers scornfully : ' You
are a fraud, for there are no such things as fairies.'

" When she utters these words I stagger and then, moaning
and clasping my hand to my heart, sink slowly to the ground.

48 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Clotilde, agonised, asks : ' What is the matter ? ' and I reply :
* You have killed me, for when a little girl says she doesn't believe
in the fairies, she mortally wounds their Queen.'

" We had got as far as my reply ' I am the Queen,' when sud-
denly I perceived, in the front row of the audience, six beauti-
fully-gowned ladies and two gentlemen, who had not been there
before. In trepidation I searched their faces, standing stock-still
and not listening to Clotilde's scornful reply. Yes ! There was
my mother, and there were my two aunts, as I had feared !

" All my stage-fright came back to me. And, instead of
sinking to the ground as I was supposed to do, I burst out sobbing
and ran off the stage, in the centre of which I left poor Clotilde
standing, a forlorn little girl of ten. Instantly there was a storm
of laughter and applause. Unable to stand it, Clotilde too ran off
the stage, and the curtain was hastily rung down.

" Soon I was surrounded with teachers and elder girls, some
abusing me, others begging me to finish the play. But it was
useless. I could act no more and the play, for lack of an under-
study, was over. I was hustled, a weeping and very bedraggled-
looking fairy, to the dormitory, where I was left alone with my
thoughts.

" I would have given worlds to have been left alone for the
remainder of the day ! But it was not to be, for scarcely fifteen
minutes passed before the door opened and my mother appeared,
followed by my aunts and their whole party !

" I could have prayed for the floor to open and swallow me !
I hid my head in the bedclothes, like an ostrich, and affected not
to hear the words addressed to me. Finally I felt firm hands on
my shoulders and I was dragged forth, weeping violently.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 49

" If mother had only taken me in her arms and kissed and
comforted me ! I was only a tiny child, not yet nine years old
and still constitutionally weak, with high-strung nerves. But
she stood there holding me and looking coldly into my tear-filled
eyes,

" ' And to think,' she said icily, ' that this is a child of mine ! '

" ' One would never think it,' said Aunt Rosine, sternly.

" All were hard, unsympathetic, seeming not to realise that
they were bullying a child whose nerves were at the breaking -
point and who was in reality almost dead from exhaustion. I
broke into another storm of sobs and, kicking myself free from
my mother, ran to the bed and threw myself upon it in despair.
With some further unkindly remarks from my mother and aunts,
the party finally left, but as he reached the door the Due de Morny,
the last to go out, turned and retraced the few steps to my bed.

" ' Never mind, my little one,' he whispered. ' You will show
them all how to act one of these days, won't you ? '

" His comforting words, however, had come too late. I had
sobbed myself into a fever and the next morning the doctor had
to be called. For several days I was kept in bed and forbidden
to see the other girls. Through these long four days I kept think-
ing constantly of my mother. Why had she been so cruel, so
cold to her daughter ? I knew that another child had been born the
year before, and with childish intuition I hit upon the right answer.
Mother loved the baby more than she loved me — if, indeed, she
loved me at all. I was inconsolable at the thought. How lonely
a vista the coming years opened to my immature imagination !
Scores of times I sobbed out loud : ' I would rather be dead !
I would rather be dead ! '

D

50 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" Alas ! this was not the last time that my mother's chilly
behaviour towards me threw me into a paroxysm of misery
resulting in illness. I never grew callous to her disapproval of
me ; her cutting criticisms had always the power to wound me to
the heart. And yet I loved her ! More, I adored her ! Poor,
lonely, friendless child that I was and had ever been, my starved
heart cried out to the one human being whose love I had the right
to claim, and who responded to my caresses sometimes almost as
if I had been a stranger."

This was the only occasion on which Sarah Bernhardt ever
bewailed to me or to anyone else, her mother's lack of affection
for her. She was scrupulously loyal to both her parents, and on
the rare occasions when she mentioned them, it was always in
terms of genuine love and respect.

During her two years in Auteuil, Sarah's mother went to see
her only three times, and her father only once. Her father's
visit took place at the end of the first year, in December 1851.
It was the first time, to her recollection, that Sarah had ever
seen him. They met in the head-mistress's office, and the occa-
sion must have been replete with drama.

" I was called from study one afternoon about three o'clock,"
said Sarah, " and taken to Mme. Fressard's bureau. I found her
waiting for me at the door with a peculiar expression on her face,
and in the arm-chair near the fireplace I saw a very well-dressed
man of about thirty, with a waxed moustache.

" ' Ma cMrie,' said Madame Fressard, ' here is your father come
to see you.'

" Mon phe ! So this was the mysterious personage whose
wish and order governed my life ; this the parent of whom my

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 51

mother was apparently so much in fear, and yet whom she seldom
saw ; this the stranger who was responsible for my being !

" I advanced shyly and gave my face to be kissed, an opera-
tion which my father performed twice, on both sides, his mous-
tache giving me a prickly sensation on my cheeks.

" ' "\\Tiy, she is growing into quite a little beauty ! ' he said
to Madame Fressard, holding me so that he could look at me
closely. Then he asked me many questions : Was I happy ?
Was I well ? Had I playmates ? What had I learned ? Could
I read and write ?— and spell ? — and do sums ?

" The interrogation lasted ten minutes and then my father
took his tall grey hat and gloves, and prepared to leave.

" ' We will leave her with you for a little while longer, madame,'
he said to Madame Fressard, while I listened with all my ears.

" ' I am going for a long journey and do not expect to return
for eight or ten months. When I come back we will consider
what is best to be done.'

" Kissing me again, he took his departure and Madame
Fressard drew me to her.

" ' I should think you would love your father very, very
much,' she said. ' He is such a handsome man ! '

" ' How can I love him ? ' I replied wonderingly. ' I have never
seen him before.' "

A year later Bernhardt had not returned from South America,
but he sent Julie a letter, in which he urged that Sarah should be
taken from Madame Fressard's preparatory school and sent to a
convent ; he suggested Grandchamps Convent, at Versailles. He
had written to the Superior, he said, explaining the circumstances,
and the latter had replied that if little Sarah was sponsored by one

52 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

other gentleman, preferably one in Paris, the matter could be
arranged. Julie at once asked the Due de Morny, who agreed to
sponsor the child.

In the same letter Bernhardt said that he had made his will,
in which he left 20,000 francs to Sarah, providing she had married
before the age of twenty-one.

" I do not intend my daughter," he wrote coldly, " to follow
the example of her mother."

Until she was twenty-one the income from the 20,000 francs
was to pay for Sarah's schooling. Her mother was to pay for
her clothes.

Although the letter said that Bernhardt did not expect to
return to France for several months, he actually caught the next
boat to that which carried his letter, and arrived in Paris just
after Sarah had been withdrawn from the school at Auteuil.

This had not been effected without a storm of protest on
Sarah's part. The two years had passed happily at Madame
Fressard's, and she feared the future, surrounded by strange and
cold relatives.

Julie had gone to London, and it was Aunt Rosine who went
to the school to fetch the child.

Sarah delighted to tell of this departure from the school.

" I hated to leave," she told me, " and it was two hours before
they could succeed in dressing me. Once this was accomplished,
I flew at Tante Rosine like a young fury, and spoiled all her
elaborate coiffure.

" She was furious and, bundling me into her coach, commanded
me to keep silent. But I would not, and throughout the journey
in the jolting carriage from Auteuil to 6, rue de la Chaussee d' Antin,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 53

where my aunt and my mother owned a joint flat, I tore at her hair
and kicked at her legs, and otherwise performed hke the disgrace-
ful young ragamuffin I really was.

" I was no better on our arrival at the flat, and kept the whole
household in an uproar until I heard the sudden announcement
that my father had arrived ! Then I coUapsed and had to be
carried to bed, where I lost consciousness for three hours. When
I awoke, it was to find a doctor and nurse installed and an array
of medicine bottles on the table. I felt utterly exhausted and I
heard Doctor Monod, the great physician who had been called by
the Due de Morny, tell my father that I was in an extremely
delicate condition and that my recovery depended upon my being
kept absolutely quiet. * Above all,' said he, ' she is not to be
" crossed." ' "

Sarah's father often visited her during her three days' con-
valescence from the fever brought on by a fit of temper, and on
two occasions he brought with him Rossini, who lived in the
same street and was an intimate friend.

Julie had been informed of Sarah's illness, but was herself
ill at Haarlem, in Holland, where she had just arrived from Lon-
don. It was a fortnight before she reached Paris, and in the mean-
time Sarah stayed at Neuilly, in the home of another and married
aunt whose husband afterwards became a monk.

When Julie finally arrived, a dinner was arranged to take place
the night before Sarah was taken to the Convent. Edouard
Bernhardt was present. This was the last time Sarah saw her
father, for he died shortly afterwards in Italy.

Sarah's life at the Convent has been more or less faithfully
described in her own Memoirs, and I shall not dilate on it here.

54 Sarah Bernhardt As I Knew Her

She was expelled three timeS' — the last time for good. She was
baptised at the age of twelve under the name of Rosine, and from
then on dated her determination to become a nun. For two years
she was fanatical on the subject of religion, but this did not pre-
vent her fits of temper from breaking out and disturbing the whole
school.

" All my time at the Convent I was haunted by the desire to
be a nun," she said to me once. " The beautiful life of the sisters
who taught us at Grandchamps, their almost unearthly purity,
their tranquil tempers, all made a tremendous impression on me.
I dearly desired to take the vows and, had it been left to me,
Sarah Bernhardt would have become Sister Rosine. But I
doubt whether I would have remained a nun for life !

" I was never genuinely religious. It was the glamour and
mystery and, above all, the tranquillity surrounding the life of
a cloistered nun that attracted me. I should have run away from
the Convent before many weeks."

Young Sarah was tremendously high-spirited and constantly
in trouble. The nuns were always sending despairing reports
to her mother.

Once, during a presentation of prizes, she pretended to
faint and acted the part so realistically that even the Superior
was deceived and believed her pupil to be dead. It gave her such
a shock that the poor lady was ill for days. Sarah was sent to
her bedroom in disgrace.

" I spent the time reading forbidden books and eating bonbons
that the concierge had smuggled in to me," she said, in telling
me the story.

On another occasion she organised a flight from the Convent.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 55

In the dead of night she and six other girls of a similarly adven-
turous disposition climbed down torn and knotted sheets from
their dormitory windows to the ground. Clambering over the
high wall surrounding the Convent grounds, thej'' took to their
heels and were caught only at noon the next day, when in the act
of throwing stones at horses of the Royal Dragoons.

For this exploit she was expelled, but was allowed to return
on her promise never to give trouble again.

Scarcely two months afterwards, however, she was discovered
by the mother-superior on top of the Convent wall, imitating the
Bishop of Versailles, whom the day before she had seen conducting
the Burial Service at a graveside. Expelled again !

On still another occasion she was caught flirting with a young
soldier, who had tossed his cap over the wall. When the nuns
tried to catch her, she climbed the wall and stayed there for
hours, until long after dark. On this occasion she caught a chill
which nearly resulted in her death, and when she had recovered
she left the Convent for good.

56 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER VI

At the age of fifteen Sarah was a thin, weedy, shock-headed girl,
about five feet tall, but undeveloped. Her complexion was pale
and dark rings under her eyes told the story of unconquered
anaemia. She had a chronic cough that would shake her thin
body to paroxysms. She was extremely subject to colds and
chills, and the slightest indisposition would send her to bed with
fever. Doctors shook their heads over her and predicted that
she would die of consumption before reaching the age of twenty.

Her anaemia gave to her face a species of sombre beauty which
was enlivened by the extraordinary play of expression in her eyes
as she talked. Her features reflected every change of mood, and
her moods were many. Judged by her face alone, she was not so
much beautiful as striking. Character fairly leapt at one when she
spoke.

Her character was a curious composite of morbidity, affec-
tion, talent and wilfulness. Her mother and her governess,
Mile, de Brabender, a probationer nun, were often reduced to
despair by her temper, which seemed to grow worse as she became
older. At other times, but more rarely, she was tractable to the
point of docility.

Sarah's first visit to the theatre was to the Opera-Comique.
This great event occurred when she was slowly recovering from the
illness which followed her expulsion from the Convent at Grand-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 57

champs. One day she was at her music lesson with Mile. Clarisse,
when her mother's maid came to say that her presence was desired
in the salon. There she found her mother, the Due de Morny,
and her younger sister Jeanne, who was never far from her
mother's side when the latter was in Paris.

Putting his hand on her curly heard the Duke said :

" We have a great surprise for you."

" A wonderful surprise," added her mother.

Sarah clapped her hands excitedly. " I knoW' — I know !
You are going to let me enter the Convent — I am to be a nun ! "

She was overwhelmed with joy ; never doubted but that
her fondest dream was to be made true.

" What is this ? " demanded the Duke in amazement. " Our
beautiful little Sarah wants to be a nun ? And why do you wish
to condemn yourself to that living death, may I ask ? "

Living death ! To the child, whose memories of the Convent
were so recent, the life of a nun was a living joy — a joy of service,
sacrifice and peace. To her restless, turbulent, almost exotic
temperament the thought of the calm, well-ordered existence of
the tranquil religieuses was a beautiful one, a sacred memory.
She could not bear the harsh laughter with which her mother
greeted the suggestion.

" Expelled from a convent and wants to be a nun ! " said
Julie, scornfully. She could never bring herself to believe that
this amazingly complex creature was her own child.

" Hush ! " commanded the Duke, frowning. " Now, my
little one, my question is not answered. Why do you wish to be
a nun ? "

Sarah looked fearlessly at her mother's protector.

58 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" The doctors say I am soon to die — I have heard them talk,"
she said. " I would hke to die with my soul dedicated to
God."

To Julie, who was still a Jewess, this was cause for further
laughter ; but the Duke, a man of much sentiment and some
honour, was much affected.

" Nonsense ! " he said. " You are not going to die for many
years ! The doctors are fools ! We shall discharge them for
idle talking. . . . No, my little one, the great surprise is not what
you thought. We are going to take you to the Opera-Comique
to see a play."

Instead of the stammered thanks he expected, Sarah began to
cry.

" I do not want to go to the Op^ra-Comique ! " she cried,
stamping her foot. " I won't go ! Mother Saint-Sophie (the
superior at the Convent) said that the theatre was wicked. I
do not want to be wicked : I want to be a nun ! "

Threats and persuasion were both necessary before Sarah
consented to don the new gown her mother had purchased for
her and accompany her parent and the Duke to the latter's box
at the Opera-Comique.

This theatre was then in the Place du Chatelet, and httle
did the child dream, as she entered it, that twenty-five years later
she herself would lease it from the city and call it the " Theatre
Sarah Bernhardt "^ — which is its name to-day. Thus, the last
theatre in which she acted was also that in which she saw her
first play.

Sarah fell an immediate victim to the theatre. The piece she
saw that night — Sarah herself did not remember its name — held

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 59

her enthralled. It was necessary for her companions to drag her
away after the curtain had fallen on the last act.

She had been transported to a new world, an unreal sphere of
delight. For days, for weeks thereafter she spoke of little else.
She besieged her mother with demands to be taken to the theatre
again. The latter, however, was too wrapped up in her own
pleasure-loving hfe to take much heed in the desires of her wilful
daughter.

One day Sarah went off to the art school, where she was learn-
ing to paint — her ambition to become a nun was almost forgotten
now, and she would spend feverish hours in preparation for the
career she was convinced was ahead of her as a great portrait-
painter — and did not return until the next morning.

All that night searchers hunted throughout the city for the
truant ; the police were informed and it was even suggested that
the Seine should be dragged, for it was remembered that to come
home from the art school, which it was ascertained she had left
at the usual hour, it was necessary for her to cross the Pont
Neuf.

At nine o'clock the next morning a tired, sleepy and very
dirty Sarah returned to her mother's flat and, in reply to a storm
of questions and reproaches from her almost frantic mother,
explained that she had spent the night in the Op^ra-
Comique.

She had gone there direct from her art school and had succeeded
in entering the theatre unobserved. Hiding under a seat in one
of the galleries, she had waited until the play began and had then
appropriated a chair. After the play, seized with panic, she was
afraid to go out with the rest of the audience and had hidden

6o Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

herself again, only leaving when the doors were opened to the
cleaners in the morning.

After that the Duke gave her regular tickets for the theatre,
and she saw many plays. Frequently she would visit the same
theatre a dozen times, learn several of the parts by heart and
surprise her friends by reciting them.

It was at this period of her life that Sarah began to have friends
of the opposite sex, but she assured me that she loved none of
them,

" I had no foolishness of that kind in my head ! " she told me
on one occasion. " My mother's house was always full of men,
and the more I saw of them the less I liked them.

" I was not a very companionable child. I had few girl
friends and fewer male acquaintances, but these latter were
assiduous in their attempts to make me like them.

" The first man who asked me to marry him was a wealthy
tanner's son, a young fellow of twenty who was earning forty
francs a week in his father's establishment, but who expected to
be rich one day.

" His father used to frequent my mother's house and one day
he brought his son with him. I was sent for to complete the party
and, though I was haughty and kept the young fellow at a dis-
tance, I could see that I had made a conquest.

" He came again and again, and would waylay me on my
journey to and from the art school, insisting on carrying my books.
I did not dislike him, for he was a handsome, earnest young man,
but neither did I like him particularly ; and when he capped his
attentions by asking me to marry him I laughed in his face. He
went away vowing revenge.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 6i

" That night my mother came into my bedroom and asked me
whether the tanner had not proposed that day.
" ' Yes, mother,' I said.
" ' And you accepted him ? '

" I gave her a look of horror. ' Accept him ? ' I cried.
' But no, of course I did not accept him ! I do not love him — that

is one reason '

" ' It is a poor reason,' said my mother angrily, ' Do you
suppose I wish you on my hands for ever ? Are you never going
to marry ? Your sisters are growing up and soon they will marry
and you will be left, an ugly vieille fille ! Love always comes after
marriage ! '

" ' I do not care,' I persisted, ' I will not marry your tanner !
He has large ears and his teeth are bad and he cannot talk. I
will not marry him, and if he comes here again I shall slap his
face ! '

" My mother was angrier than I had ever seen her. ' Very
well, then, you shall do as you Hke ! I wash my hands of you ! '
she exclaimed, and left me.

" I burst into a storm of tears and cried half the night.
What a lonely child I was ! My only friends were Madame
Guerard, who was under the domination of my mother, and
Mile, de Brabender, a timid soul, who would fondle and talk to
me affectionately when we were alone, but who was afraid to open
her mouth in the presence of my lovely mother."

The tanners — father and son — ceased to frequent the Van
Hard house, and for a long while Julie did not speak to her
daughter except formally. To make up for it, she was tre-
mendously and ostentatiously affectionate with her two other

62 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

daughters, Jeanne and Regine, who had been born four years
previously.

Regine had a childhood somewhat similar to that of Sarah ;
that is to say, she was bundled from here to there, never nursed
by her mother, alternately the recipient of cuffs and kisses, and
from the age of three left pretty much to her own sweet devices.
It is not to be wondered at that she grew into a perfect terror of
a child.

At the time of which we are writing now, Regine was forbidden
the reception rooms of the house, and spent most of her time in
Sarah's room. Sarah became her nurse and teacher, and this
relationship continued until, fourteen years later, Regine died.

Julie Van Hard had become a fashionable personage in Paris,
owing to her relationship with the Due de Morny, who was then
one of the most powerful men in France. The Duke kept her
plentifully supplied with money, and her gowns were the rage of
Paris.

Beautiful, of commanding stature, her glossy reddish -gold
hair without a streak of grey in it, Julie was an idol to be wor-
shipped by the youthful dilettantes of the gay city. No reception,
no first night at a theatre, was complete without the presence of
Julie Van Hard.

Dressmakers besieged her to wear their gowns for nothing,
in return for the advertisement she gave them. It was Julie
Van Hard, mother of Sarah Bernhardt, who launched the famous
Second Empire style of tightly-wound sleeves, with lace cuffs,
square ddcolleti and draped gowns with long trains. She was a
great coquette, and almost certainly the Due de Morny was not
the only recipient of her favours.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 63

Julie Van Hard's home was spacious, and was invariably filled
with visitors. There was a dinner or an entertainment of some
kind every night. Gathered in the two gorgeously-decorated
salons one would see such people as Sarah's two aunts, Rosine
Berendt and Henriette Faure ; Paul Regis, who stood as her god-
father at Sarah's baptism ; General Polhes, an old friend of Julie's
and godfather of Regine ; Madame de Guerard, Count de Larry,
Due de Morny, Count de Castelnau, Albert Prudhomme, Vis-
comte de Nou^, Comte de Larsan, Comte de Charaix, General de
la Thurmelifere, Augustus Levy the playwright, Vicomte
de Gueyneveau, and many others.

Sarah seldom appeared at the parties in which these people
figured. Their activities did not interest her. She had refused
to continue with her piano studies, to the great disappointment of
her mother, who was an accomplished pianiste.

" I have always hated the piano ! " Sarah told me once in
1890. " I think it is because Mile. Clarisse, my teacher, used to
rap me on the fingers with a little cane she carried to mark the
tempo. Whenever I hit a false note, down would come the cane,
and then I would fly into a fury, charge the poor lady like a small
tigress and try to pull her hair out. She did not remain to teach
me very long and she was never replaced ! "

The next candidate to Sarah's hand was a worthy glove-maker,
named Trudeau. He was wealthy, as wealth was counted then,
and while not precisely the son-in-law Julie would have wished,
he would doubtless have been welcome enough in the family had
he succeeded in breaking down the barriers Sarah had erected
before her heart.

Sarah's chief objection to Trudeau was that he was too fat.

64 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Then, again, he was smooth-shaven, and it was accounted very
ugly in those days not to have a moustache. Clean-shaven men,
on entering a theatre, would often receive a jeering reception
from the audience. The hirsute fashion of that period was long
side-whiskers, a short, double-pointed beard, and a pointed,
waxed moustache.

Julie did not urge her daughter to marry Trudeau. She
probably knew that any such effort would have been doomed to
failure from the start. Trudeau, however, laid determined siege
to the young girl for several months, during which he sent her,
among other expensive gifts, a brooch of the sort that was after-
wards known as a " la VaUiere." This brooch was among those
recently sold by auction in Paris.

To all his many proposals of marriage, however, Sarah turned
a deaf ear. She would taunt him about his figure, which was
short and broad, and above all she would jeer at his lack of a
moustache.

"Never will I marry a man who cannot grow hair on his face ! "
she once declared.

He persisted, until one day Sarah called him a " fat old pig "
and threw the contents of a glass of champagne in his face.
Then he accepted his congd, and went out of Sarah's life for
ever.

Following Trudeau came a chemist, who had a shop at the
corner of the Boulevard and the rue de la Michodifere. He had
been captivated by the red-haired long-legged youngster who
used to come to him to have prescriptions filled. I do not recall
the name of this man, but I know that when Sarah refused him he
consoled himself less than a month later by marrying a widow.

Sarah Bernhardt.
One of the best of the earliest pictures.

^.64.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 65

Years later Sarah broke a parasol over his head, when he refused
to promise not to supply her sister Jeanne with morphine.

After that a succession of young men unsuccessfully petitioned
for her hand. In a space of two years she had nearly a dozen pro-
posals, all of which she refused with equal disdain. She was
becoming a noteworthy character in Paris herself, but she, the
child, was of course eclipsed by the brilliant beauty of her mother.

These suitors came from all classes and conditions of society.
At least one — the Vicomte de Larsan, a young fop whose father was
a frequenter of Julie's house — ^was of noble birth and heir to a
considerable fortune. He was twenty-two years of age, and when
he asked her to marry him, Sarah slapped his face.

I had many long talks with Sarah about these early romantic
episodes. She loved to repeat reminiscences of her girlhood and
she had an astounding memory.

As far back as 1892, she told me that in her life she had received
more than a thousand proposals of marriage, and that she could
remember the name and the date of every one of them !

I was curious about these thousand proposals of marriage,
and often tried to get her to give me the names. But she said
that to do so might cause harm to some of the men concerned,
many of whom were then happily married, and had children. She
told me of many episodes, however, in which such secrecy was
not necessary, and these episodes will be found in detail later in
this book.

" In my teens I cared nothing for men — they disgusted me ! "
she said. " I was called a great little beauty, and men used to
kneel at my feet and swear that they would jump in the Seine
if I refused them. I invariably told them to go and do so !

66 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" I was indifferent to all men. My mother's flat at 22, rue
de la Michodi^re, which had been beautifully furnished by the
Due de Morny, was full of men visitors from early afternoon until
late at night. I would keep out of their way as much as possible,
and once I ran away for three days, because one of my mother's
admirers persisted in making revolting proposals to me. *

" Finally I returned one day from the painting school and

found my mother and the servant out and P installed in

the salon. Before I could escape, he had seized me and covered
me with kisses. They were the first love-kisses I had ever
received, and I was not to give one for years afterwards.

" I struggled violently, bit him on the chin and scratched his
face frightfully, but I was a weak child and he would have over-
powered me eventually had not the door opened and my mother,
followed by the Due de Morny, come in. Neighbours had heard
my screams and were congregated outside the door. My mother
was white with passion.

" The Duke challenged P to a duel in secret, his rank

preventing him from making the affair a public one. The duel

was never fought, however, for P left that night for his

home near Arcachon, and a few months later I heard he had been
killed in a coaching accident near Tours.

" The Vicomte de Larsan was the most persistent suitor,

after P , and he was only a boy. I could not bear the sight

of him, with his rouged cheeks, his scented hands, his powdered
hair and his shirts covered with expensive lace. He used to
wait outside the house for hours until I came out, and would make
fervent declarations of love in the street. I grew to hate him,
and I told him so !

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 67

" But at that time I hated nearly all men, except the Due de
Morny. That nobleman was my mother's most faithful pro-
tector, and he gave her large sums, which helped to pay for my
education and my art lessons. He used to predict a great future
for me. Not only did he stand sponsor for me for the Versailles
convent but also procured my entrance into the Conservatoire.

" Many people in those days thought that I was the Duke's
natural daughter, and the legend has persisted. It was not true,
though, for when I was born my mother was in exceedingly humble
circumstances, and she did not meet the Duke- — a meeting which
Changed her fortunes — until several years later."

68 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER VII

The first press notice that Sarah Bernhardt ever received was
published in the Mercure de Paris in October i860, when she
was sixteen years old. Curiously enough it did not concern her
histrionic talent' — then just beginning to develop- — ^but related to a
painting entitled " Winter in the Champs Elysees," with which
Sarah had won the first prize at the Colombier Art School in the
Rue de Vaugirard.

Sarah gave me the clipping to copy — it was among her most
prized possessions — and, translated, it reads as follows :

" Among the remarkable candidates for admission to the
Beaux Arts should be mentioned a young Parisienne of sixteen
years, named Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, who is a pupil at
Mile. Gaucher 's class in the Colombier School. Mile. Bernhardt
exhibits an extraordinary talent for one so young and her picture
" Winter in the Champs Elysees," with which she has won the first
prize for her class, is distinguished for its technical perfection.
Rarely have we had the pleasure of welcoming into the Beaux
Arts a young artist of similar promise, and there can be no doubt
that very soon Mile. Bernhardt will be classed as one of our greatest
painters and thus win glory for herself and her country."

The painting in question was bought by an American friend

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 69

of Sarah's some forty years later. I do not know how much was
paid, but other early paintings of hers, which have sold privately
during the past twenty years, have brought very large prices
indeed.

My mention of this first press criticism of Sarah's work brings
to mind the day she brought me, a little girl, into the library at
her house 11, Boulevard Malsherbes, and showed me four fat
volumes each filled with newspaper clippings, and another one
only just begun. On a chair was stacked a collection of envelopes
each dated, containing other clippings, and these Sarah showed me
how to paste in the book. It was a great honour for me.

Later in the afternoon Maurice Bernhardt, then a small boy,
came in and helped me, but I remember that he was more of a
nuisance than a help, and he ended by tipping over the paste-pot
and making a mess which I had to clean up.

When she died Sarah possessed many of these fat volumes of
press-cUppings, from every country in the world. It was said
that if all the newspaper notices she received during her career
could have been placed end to end, they would have reached
around the world, and that if all the photographs printed of her
could have been stacked in a pile, they would have reached higher
than the Eiffel Tower.

Somebody even calculated once that the name Sarah Bernhardt
alone had been printed so often in newspapers and magazines,
and on bills, programmes and the like, that the letters used would
bridge the Atlantic, while the ink would be sufficient to supply the
needs of The Times for two months !

I cannot vouch for this, but there can be no doubt whatever
that, if the number of times one's name is printed is a criterion.

70 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Sarah Bernhardt was by far the most famous person who has ever
lived. For nearly sixty years never a day went by without the
words " Sarah Bernhardt " being printed somewhere or other.
When she returned from her American tour in 1898, the press-
clippings she brought back with her filled a large trunk.

The interesting point in all this is that only a very few writers
concerned themselves with her painting and sculpture. Out
of all the millions of articles written about her, a bare sixty or
seventy concern her capabilities outside the theatre.

If little was known of Sarah the artist, still less was known of
Sarah the woman. That is why this book is written.

Thousands of people who loved her as an actress never knew
that she had been married ! Those who knew that she was a
Jewess born were few indeed. Nothing was known of her intimate
home Hfe, of her affaires du cceur, of her attempts at authorship,
of the many plays she either wrote or revised.

In all the multitudinous clippings in that wonderful collec-
tion of hers, how many reveal the fact that Sarah Bernhardt
was a certificated nurse ? How many persons know that she once
studied medicine and was highly proficient in anatomy ? How
many know that she was a vegetarian, and often said that her
long life was due to her horror of meat ? How many know that,
for many long years, until infirmity intervened, Sarah Bernhardt,
the Jewess born, was a practising Catholic, seldom missing her
Sunday attendance at Mass ?

Is it not extraordinary that so little should really have been
known of the most famous woman in the world ? Is it not amaz-
ing that Sarah was able to conceal her home life under the glorious
camouflage of her stage career ?

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 71

Yet, looking back into history, how little is known of the
great men and women who decorate its pages !

We know where Jean d'Arc was bom ; we know she saved the
French armies from defeat ; but never has it been written where
she went to school, and little or nothing is known of her family, of
the mother who produced her, of the father who brought her up a
heroine. Oliver Cromwell had a wife, yet what do we know of
her ? George Washington was one of the greatest warriors of
his day, yet we know little of the private life of the Father of
America.

I have always felt this lack of personal knowledge of our own
great ones. Only recently have biogi-aphers realised the true
scope of their task. Until the intimate story of Victor Hugo
was pubUshed, some few years ago, how little we knew of the man
who wrote three times as many words as there are in the Holy
Bible !

This is somewhat of a digression, but one justified perhaps
by the considerations involved. If the great and successful
deeds of men of genius make entrancing reading, how much
more absorbing can be the tale of their spiritual struggles
and "mental fights" ?

' And with her graduation from the art school — she was entitled
to enter the Beaux Arts but never did — the real struggles of the
lonely, temperamental child who was Sarah Bernhardt began.
Though she did not know it, a war of impulses was going on within
her soul.

There was her great, her undoubted talent for painting and
sculpture, which her teachers were convinced would soon make
her a great personage. There was her budding dramatic talent

72 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

which she was only beginning to suspect. There was her funda-
mental morbidity, that would plunge her into moods during which
she dreamed of and longed for death. There was the craving of
her turbulent nature for the peace and tranquillity investing the
life of a cloistered nun. There was her inherited unmorahty^ —
I know of no other word with which to describe it — which was
for ever tugging at her and endeavouring to drag her down into
the free-and-easy existence led by her mother. There was her
maiden heart, starving for affection. There was her delicate
health, which made prolonged effort impossible. And lastly
there was her iron will, inherited probably from her father.

A phrase in one of the pathetic writings of Marie Bashkirtseff
comes to my mind : "At the age of fourteen I was the only
person remaining in the world ; for it was a world of my own that
could be penetrated only by understanding, and no one, not
even my mother, understood."

How could the frivolous nature of Julie Van Hard have
comprehended the deep waters that ran within the soul of her
unwanted child ?

Julie would be enormously vexed at Sarah's seeming dullness.
When she had said something particularly witty — and Julie was
witty according to the humorous standards of the period — and
Sarah did not smile, Julie would cry : " Oh, you stupid child !
To think that you are mine. . . ! "

Not even Sarah's achievements in the school of painting could
convince Julie that she had not given birth to a child of inferior
mentality. For what success Sarah had with her pictures, Julie
took credit to herself. ♦

She was exasperated by Sarah's attitude towards the life she

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 73

herself loved so well. Julie would remain for hours at table,
surrounded by wits and half-wits, dandies and hangers-on at
court, proud in the assumption that she was an uncrowned queen.
At such parties Sarah would sit speechless, unable or unwiUing
to join in the coarse sallies of her mother's guests. Her mother
used constantly to refer to her in the presence of others as " That
stupid child," or " That queer little creature."

When she had an exceptionally important personage to enter-
tain, Julie would forbid Sarah to show herself, fearful that her
daughter's " stupidity " would injure her own chances.

As constantly as she blamed Sarah, she praised and lavished
affection on Jeanne, her " little Jeannot." Jeanne seemed to
take naturally after her mother in aU things, and when she grew
older she even surpassed her mother by the frivolous way in which
she lived.

The sad story of Jeanne will be told later, but it may be said
that she had none of Sarah's vast intelligence, none of her good
taste, none of her tremendous capacity for affection. Jeanne
was without talent- — a pretty but vapid shell. Her father was
not, of course, Edouard Bernhardt.

Regine, on the other hand, took after Sarah, who practically
brought her up. But Regine had Sarah's temper and wild,
erratic temperament without Sarah's talent and Sarah's stubborn
will. Where Sarah was firm and unyielding, Regine was merely
obstinate. Where Sarah was clever, Regine was only " smart."
She was a " pocket edition of Sarah," as her mother once
remarked, without Sarah's depth of character.

Two months after Sarah attained her sixteenth birthday, her
mother moved to No. 265, rue St. Honore, not far from the Theatre

74 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

FrangaiS' — better known as the Comedie Fran9aise — and Sarah
delighted in loitering about the stage entrance and making friends
with the actors and actresses who passed in and out.

Sometimes she passed whole afternoons and evenings thus
employed. Occasionally she would run errands for her idols, to
be recompensed by a free ticket to the balcony. On one never-
to-be-forgotten occasion Jules Bondy, one of the actors, took the
eager little red-head into the theatre itself and installed her on
a case in the wings, from which she could see the play without her-
self being seen. It was Molifere's Le Midecin Malgre Lui, and
from that time dated Sarah's love for the works of the actor-
playwright to whom the Comedie Frangaise is dedicated.

In later years Sarah played Moliere several times, but she made
no notable success in this author's works.

Sarah always longed to be a comedienne ; she might have
been a great one, in fact, but for her greatergifts for tragedy, which
prevented managers from risking her appearance in lighter drama.
Great comediennes of merit are less rare than great tragediennes.
In fact, I doubt whether there is living to-day an actress who will
ever be called Sarah Bernhardt's equal in tragedy.

Shortly after the household moved, Sarah fell down the stairs
and broke her leg. An infection developed and it was two months
before she was able to walk. When she finally recovered she was
thinner than ever — a veritable skeleton. Her face maintained
its eerie beauty, the large blue eyes retained their occasional
fire, but the flush of fever relieved her habitual pallor and
beneath her neck her body was httle more than a bag of
bones.

She ceased wearing short dresses and took to long ones, for

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 75

very shame of her thin hmbs. She wore thick clothes and corsets
to pad herself out. She grew introspective, spending long hours
alone or playing silently with her infant sister Regine, or reading
books. Once Mile, de Brabender discovered her on her knees and,
on inquiry, obtained the confession that she had been praying
steadily for nearly three hours,

•The rehgious habit again grew on her. The subjects for her
brush were mostly saints, surrounded w ith the conventional halo
She hung her room with religious pictures, some done by herself
and some bought cheaply at a shop near the Church of St. Ger-
main I'Auxerrois. Over her bed was a crucifix, modelled by
herself from wax.

She was confirmed at the age of sixteen years and
five months, and wore the virginal white for days afterwards —
until it grew so dirty, indeed, that her exasperated mother made
her throw it away, *

A priest had given her a rosary that had been dipped in the
holy waters of Lourdes, and this she wore continually. In the
quarter she became known sls" la petite religieuse. ' ' Doctors shook
their heads, and predicted that she was falling into a decline,
from which she would never recover. Her suitors fell off, one by
one, until only a retired miller, Jacques Boujon, a man of fifty,
remained.

To English readers it may seem incredible that a girl of sixteen
should have had actual suitors, and among them men of position
and wealth. This was nevertheless common in France in the
middle of the last century, and it is by no means rare in the France
of to-day. Added to this was Julie Van Hard's intense desire to
rid herself, once and for all, of this strange child she had brought

76 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

into being, whose sombre presence in her house of gaiety seemed
to be a perpetual mockery.

One day Sarah was visited in her bedroom, where she was
studying, by her mother and Mile, de Brabender.

" I want you to put on this new dress I have bought you, and
then come down to the salon. There is something particularly
important we have to say to you," said Julie.

Sarah shivered. There seemed something extraordinarily
portentous in her mother's manner. Who were " we " ? The
child felt, as she told me years later, that that moment represented
a cross-roads in her life.

Overwhelmed with a dread she could not define, Sarah put her
new dress on with trembhng fingers and descended to the salon.
There she found quite a company awaiting her. Foremost in
the party was the Due de Morny. Next to him was her mother.
Across the table was Jean Meyedieu, her father's notary-pubUc.
Next to him was Aunt Rosine. Madame Guerard, wearing
an anxious look, occupied a seat near the fireplace. Mile, de
Brabender, accompanied by Jeanne, followed Sarah in.

The door was closed. Then Julie turned to her daughter.
" Some months ago," she said, " you refused to consider a
proposal of marriage from an honorable gentleman."

Sarah remained mute.

" To-day another honorable gentleman asks you to marry
him."

Storm signals flashed from the girl's eyes. " I will marry
no one except God ! " she declared. " I wish to return to the
Convent ! "

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 77

" To enter a convent," put in Meyedieu, " one must have
money, or else be a servant. You have not a sou ! "

" I have the money my father left me ! "

" No, you have not ! You have only the interest until you
are twenty-one. If, at that age, you have not married, the terms
of your father's will stipulate that you shall lose the principal."

The Due de Morny intervened.

" Do you think that you are right, dear, in thus going against
the wishes of your mother ? "

Sarah began to sob. " My mother is not married, yet she
wants me to be a wife ! My mother is a Jewess, and she does
not want her daughter to become a nun ! "

" Leave the room ! " ordered Julie, angrily.

Thus ended the second family council over the future of Sarah,
and the problem was not yet solved.

After this Sarah's existence in her mother's house became a
torment. She seldom saw her parent ; and when she did, the
latter hardly looked at her. She took her meals with Regine
and Mile, de Brabender in the nursery. She abandoned art, and
spent her days looking after her baby sister in the Champs
Elysees and on the qtiais of the Seine.

She still attended the theatre as often as she could, and became
a faithful devotee of the Comedie. Often she would venture as
far afield as the Chatelet, or the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, to
witness plays at the Gymnase.

One evening she returned, after a solitary evening at the
theatre and, finding the salon empty, began to recite one of the
parts she had seen. She had seen the play so often that the role
of the heroine was practically graven on her memory. Believing

78 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

herself entirely alone, she went right through with the piece,
finishing with a dramatic flourish at the place where the heroine —
I forget the play^ — was supposed to stab herself to death-
There was a hearty " Bravo, bravo ! " and the Due de Morny
rose from a chair in which he had been sitting behind a screen.

The Duke went out and called to Julie and Rosine, and, when
the two sisters entered, he asked the child to play the part again.
At first bashful, Sarah eventually plucked up courage and finally
did as she was asked. The Duke was much affected.

" That memory and that voice must not be lost ! " he cried.
" Sarah shall enter the Conservatoire ! "

" She has no sense, but she is not bad at reciting," agreed
Julie, scenting a happy compromise.

The Conservatoire ? Sarah began to worry. What was this
new horror to which they were so easily condemning her ?

" What is it, the Conservatoire ? " she asked, hesitating.

" It is a school, my dear," said the Duke ; " a school for great
actresses."

" To the Conservatoire, by all means ! " cried Aunt Rosine.
" She is too stupid to be a good actress, but it will keep her out
of mischief ! "

The Duke was quite excited.

" We have solved the problem ! " he cried. " Our Sarah is to
become an actress ! "

" But I don't want to be an actress ! " cried poor Sarah.

Her objections were overridden, and that very night the Duke
wrote to his friends at the Conservatoire, demanding that Sarah
should be inscribed on the lists for admission.

Sarah was now within a month of seventeen.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 79

CHAPTER VIII

When application had been made to Auber, then director of the
Conservatoire — who, on the Due de Momy's recommendation,
had agreed to inscribe Sarah on his hstS' — it was found that only
nine weeks remained before the examinations !

Even to-day, a conservative estimate of the time required for
preparation for the Conservatoire is eighteen months. Many
children start studying for it when they are ten or eleven. Rarely
has any pupil succeeded in entering without at least nine months'
preliminary study. And Sarah had only nine weeks !

Aunt Rosine was sceptical of Sarah's ability to pass the
examinations. The Due de Momy was consoling.

" You wiU not pass this time," he said, " but there are other
examinations next year."

As to Julie Van Hard, she was inexorable with her daughter.

" You are my daughter. You shall not disgrace me by
failing ! " she said to Sarah.

Julie took the child out, and bought her books by the dozen.
They consulted Hugo Waldo, an actor acquaintance, and on his
advice chose the plays of Corneille, Moliere and Racine. Julie
wanted the child to select a part in Phedre for her examination,
but Mile, de Brabender, the probationer nun, said that this could
not be permitted, as Phedre was too shocking a role to place on
the lips of a jeune fille.

8o Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

In the end, Sarah learned the part of Agnes in Molifere's Ecole
des Femmes, but never used it in the examination. She passed
most of her time learning to pronounce her " o's " and " r's "
and " p's," and in practising the art of pronouncing each syllable
separately and in putting the accent in the tone, rather than on
the syllabic divisions. Nowhere is French spoken entirely purely,
except on the stage of the better Paris theatres.

The day of the examinations came, and Sarah was by now
word-perfect. To enable her to say her part, however, it
was necessary for someone to give the cues. This had not been
thought of.

Julie, whose taste in dress was exquisite but a trifle exotic,
had out -done herself in her purchases of things for Sarah to wear
on the great day. The go^^^l was black, deeply decollete about
the shoulders ; a corset accentuated the extreme slenderness of
her waist ; the skirt was short, but lacy drawers, beautifully
embroidered, descended to the beaded slippers.

Around her neck, Sarah wore a white silk scarf. Her hair,
after an hour's tussle with the hairdresser, had been combed and
tugged into some sort of order and was bound tightly back from
the forehead with a wide black ribbon. The effect was bizarre.
One of George Clairin's best-known sketches of Sarah showed her
in the hands of the hairdresser on this occasion, her mother
standing near.

After what seemed an interminable wait in the hot, stifling
auditorium of the Conservatoire, Sarah's name was called.
Trembling, she ascended to the stage. On the way she tried to
loosen the painful ribbon about her head, with the result that it
came unpinned and her glorious mass of red-gold hair tumbled

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 8i

forthwith about her face. Indeed when she mounted to the stage
where the jury sat in uncompromising attitudes, her face could
hardly be seen.

" And what will you recite ? " asked the chairman, a man
named Leataud.

" I have learned the part of Agnes, but I have no one to give
me my cues," said Sarah.

" Then what will you do ? "

Sarah was at a loss, but she regained courage suddenly on
seeing two of the jury smiling at her encouragmgly.

" I will recite to you a fable : ' The Two Pigeons,' " she said.
When she had finished. Professor Provost, one of the jury, asked
that she should be accepted. " I will put her in my class," he
said. " The child has a voice of gold ! "

This was the first occasion on which Sarah's " golden voice "
was thus referred to.

Sarah, who was eighth on the list at the Conservatoire, took
no prize, but she was admitted ! She was mad with joy. Her
mother condescended to praise her a little. Mile, de Brabender
and Madame Guerard overwhelmed her with caresses. Little
Sarah was a member of the Conservatoire ! Her career had begun.

Sarah had no conspicuous success at the Conservatoire. She
obtained indeed one second prize for comedy, but her great talent
for the drama had not yet developed. With the exception of
Camille Doucet — the jury voted unanimously that she could not
be included among those to be given certificates of merit. Sarah,
despite her second prize, returned home in tragic mood.

" It was the second great disappointment of my life," she said,
when she related it to me years later. " I crept up to my bed-

82 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

room and locked the door. Had there been any poison at hand I
would have taken it. I was seized with a great desire to end my
life, I thought of the Convent, of Mere Sainte-Sophie. Oh, if
they had only let me become a nun, instead of entering this
vast, unkind world of the theatre ! I cried my eyes out and finally
went to sleep,

" When I awoke, it was late at night. There was not a sound
in the house. My fury had spent itself, and only a great despair
remained. The thought that I would have to face my mother
the next day seared my soul. How could I stand her sarcasm,
that cutting phrase I knew so well : * Thou art so stupid, child ! '

" I determined I would end it all for ever. I would die. I
would creep out of the house while no one watched, run down to
the quai and throw myself in the Seine, . . .

" I approached the door, unlocked it, opened it cautiously.
As I did so a piece of paper, that had been thrust into the jamb,
fluttered to the ground, I took it nervously. It was a letter
from Madame Guerard, my faithful old nurse. I retraced my
steps into the room and held the letter to the candle as I
incredulously read the message it contained :

" ' While you were asleep the Due de Morny sent a note to
your mother saying that Camille Doucet has confirmed that
your engagement at the Comedie Fran9aise is arranged for. . , .'

" My mood changed miraculously. I shouted with joy. I
ran to the door, flung it open, ready to cry out my news to anyone
who heard me. But the household slept. I went back to bed and
cried myself to sleep for very happiness."

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 83

The next day Sarah received a formal letter summoning her
to the Com^die. The day following she was engaged, and signed
her contract. Almost immediately the began rehearsing in the
play Iphigenie.

About two months before her eighteenth birthday Sarah made
her dSbut at the Comedie, in a minor part. As a debutante from
the Conservatoire, she was naturally fair prey for the critics.
The greatest of these was Francisque Sarcey, who was credited
with the power to make or break an actress. Managers hung on
his verdicts.

This is what that powerful critic had to say about Sarah on
the occasion of her debut :

" Mile. Bernhardt is tall and pretty and enunciates well, which
is all that can be said for the moment."

Another critic, James Berbier, wrote :

" A young woman named Sarah Bernhardt made her ddbut
at the Comedie on September i. She has a pretty voice
and a not-unpleasing face, but her body is ugly and she has no
stage presence."

Still another, Pierre Mirabeau, declared :

Sarah Bernhardt has no personality ; she possesses only a

voice.

11

After Sarah's second dibut, in Valine, this same Mirabeau
wrote :

" We had the pleasure of seeing in the cast at the Com6die

84 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

the young woman Sarah Bernhardt, who made her d^but recently
in Iphigenie. She has improved, but she still has much to
learn before she can properly be considered worthy of the House of
Mohere."

When Sarah appeared in Les Femmes Savantes, Francisque
Sarcey, who had ignored her in Valerie, devoted several lines to
her :

" Mile. Bernhardt took the role of Henriette. She was just
as pretty and insignificant as in iphigenie and in Valeric No
reflections on her performance can be extremely gay. However,
it is doubtless natural that among all the debutantes we are asked
to see there should be some who do not succeed."

Sarah was furious at these critiques, but not as furious as her
mother, who bitterly exclaimed :

" See ! All the world calls you stupid, and all the world
knows that you are my child ! "

Her mother did not perhaps realise that her words cut the
young actress straight to the heart. Above all things Sarah
had wanted to please Julie ; above all things Sarah had feared
her mother's harsh criticisms.

That night she was found moaning in her dressing-room. A
doctor, hurriedly called, declared she had taken poison, and she
was rushed off to the hospital.

For five days Sarah hovered between life and death, finally
rallying after four of the best doctors in Paris had been called
in to aid in the fight.

In response to questioning by her old friend, Madame Guerard,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 85

Sarah confessed that she had swallowed the contents of a bottle
of liquid rouge. Asked the reason for this strange and terrible
act she answered :

" Life was useless ; I wanted to see what death was
Hke ! "

I have always believed that it was her mother's want of
sympathy for her which caused Sarah's desperate act, and if there
was another reason the world never knew it. Newspapers of the
day attributed it to a love affair, but this Sarah denied when she
related the episode to me^ — an episode, by the way, which is not
included in her Memoirs.

" I was wrapped up in my art, and had no serious love affairs
at that time," she said. " I was simply despondent because I
did not succeed fast enough. Why ! not a single critic praised
me!"

It was the famous authoress Georges Sand who took Sarah in
hand afterwards, preached love of life to her and persuaded her
that a great future lay ahead. To Georges Sand Sarah one day
confided :

" Madame Sand, I would rather die than not be the greatest
actress in the world ! "

" You are the greatest, my child ! " said Madame Sand
with conviction, and added : " One day soon the world will lie
at your feet ! "

Sarah's morbidity continued to be one of her chief charac-
teristics however. She delighted in going to funerals ; and visiting
the Morgue, that grim stone building with its fearful rows of
corpses exposed on marble slabs, was one of her favourite diver-
sions.

86 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Death had a weird fascination for her. Shortly after she entered
the Comedie she had a love affair with an undertaker's assistant,
but she broke off her engagement to him when he refused to
allow her to be present at an embalming.

She used to describe the robe she wished to be buried in :
" Pure white, with a crimson edging, and with yellow lilies
embroidered about the girdle."

The crimson edging and the embroidery were absent when she
was finally laid to rest.

Later on we shall hear again of this morbid streak in the
divine actress — ^how she designed and even slept in the very coffin
in which she was buried ; how once she shammed dead in her
dressing-room at the Odeon to such purpose that a hearse was
sent for and the curtain rung down, while a tearful director
announced her demise !

Her notorious temper had not left her. If anything, it was more
violent than ever. The stage door-keeper at the Comddie on
one occasion called her " Young Bernhardt," omitting the honorary
prefix of " Mademoiselle." Without a word she broke her parasol
across the man's head. Seeing him bleeding, she hurried for
water, tore her silk petticoat into pieces, and bathed and bound
his wound.

Twenty years later, when her name was beginning to echo
round the world, this same door-keeper came to her house and
told her that he had lost his position through infirmity and was
now at the end of his resources.

With one of those gestures of munificence which mark the
tragedienne's career like flashes of light, Bernhardt turned to her
secretary and instructed him to buy the old man a cottage in his

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 87

native Normandy, and to place a sufficient sum in trust to keep him
for the remainder of his life. *

Bernhardt made many enemies during her first years on the
stage, and some of them remained her adversaries until their
deaths. She outlived almost all of them.

The afternoon of her debut at the Comedie was a matinee
exclusively for professional folk and critics. One of the latter,
an old and embittered man named Prioleau, was credited with
being almost as powerful as Sarcey. He was the doyen of the
critics, and as such occupied a privileged position in the wings.

The better to see the performance, he shifted his chair until
it partly blocked one of the exits. Sarah Bernhardt, going off the
stage backwards, tripped over the legs of the critic's chair and
nearly fell. On recovering herself, she seized the chair by it
legs and pitched the critic to the floor. Then she turned on her
heel with a fiery admonition to " keep your legs to yourself."

Horrified actresses told the angry girl that the man she had
insulted was Prioleau, the great critic. Returning to where the
choleric old gentleman was picking himself up, Sarah set herself
squarely in front of him, her eyes glinting fire.

" If you dare to say or write a word about me," she warned
him, " I will scratch your eyes out ! "

The next day she sent him a written apology and a bunch of
flowers, following this with a personal visit, in which she pleaded
with the old man to forgive an act of which she would certainly
not have been capable had she been in her right senses. Prioleau
never forgave her, but he never used his heavy weapon of sar-
casm against her. Perhaps he always secretly believed in her
threat. He died not long afterwards.

88 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Sarah was an extraordinary mixture of pugnacity and senti-
ment. One day she found a dog investigating her overturned
bottle of smelling-salts. Infuriated she dropped the poor Httle
creature out of the dressing-room window on to a small ledge
from which, if it had moved, it would have fallen four or five
stories to the ground.

Five minutes later shouts attracted a crowd to the dressing-
room, where they found a maid desperately hanging on to Sarah's
feet, while the young actress hung head downwards outside the
window, in order to rescue the dog. Having got the animal up
safely, she took it home and smothered it with kindness,
never permitting it to leave her until it died of old age fourteen
years later."

Sarah's love for animals — particularly ferocious ones — ^was
one of the abiding passions of her life. At different times she
owned a pink monkey given her by an African explorer, a wild-
cat which was presented to her during one of her American tours,
and two hon cubs, baptised " Justinian " and " Scarpia." All four
were tame and often accompanied her to the theatre, remaining
in her dressing-room while she played.

She also once brought back with her from Mexico a tiger cub,
which terrorised her household and, when she took it to the
theatre one day, nearly broke up the performance by eating and
tearing the curtains. The cub was finally poisoned by somebody
in Sarah's entourage. On one occasion I saw Sarah feeding live
quails to this tiger cub in her dressing-room. The same day it bit
Madame Johet, the prompter.

Another savage creature Sarah once owned was a dog. She had
only to say to him " Allez ! " (Go !) and he would spring at any-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 89

one's throat. One day when we were at the Hotel Avenida,
Lisbon, Sarah asked me to go to my room to fetch something for
her. As I went out I heard her say " Allez ! " and the dog sprang
at me. Fortunately my husband arrived just in time, and tore
the dog away. White with fury, Pierre said to Sarah : "If that
happens again, I'll kill the brute ! "

But I never believed Sarah did the thing deliberately. She
was very apologetic.

But this is digressing from our story. We left Sarah as a
ddhutante at the Comedie Fran9aise. Her dehut, as we have seen,
was not very brilliant. But if her entrance into France's most
famous theatre was not particularly exciting, her exit was the
reverse.

90 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER IX

In the Comedie Fran^aise stands a statue : the bust of Molifere,
the great actor-pla3rwright to whom the theatre is dedicated.
Each year, on the anniversary of his death, every actor and actress
belonging to the company attached to the playhouse must file past
the statue and salute.

It was due to an incident occurring during this annual cere-
mony that Sarah Bernhardt left the Comedie for the first time.

The actresses were assembled in a corridor giving access to
the statue — the socidtaires (actresses who had completed their
period of apprenticeship) naturally taking precedence over the
debutantes. All were in costume, and over the costumes they
wore the long mantle, showing their badge of membership of the
Comddie. These mantles had long trains and, in endeavouring
to avoid treading on one of them, little Regine Bernhardt, who
held Sarah's hand, inadvertently stepped on that worn by Madame
Nathalie, one of the oldest actresses of the theatre, whom Sarah
described as " old and wicked."

Madame Nathalie turned and, roughly seizing the child,
pushed her so violently that she was flung against a stone pillar
bruising her side and cutting her face.

Sarah Bernhardt forgot the solemnity of the occasion, forgot
the distinction of the company, forgot everything except that her
little sister had been wantonly struck.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 91

" Beast ! " she cried, and, running to the old actress, slapped
first one side of her face and then the other, as hard as she could
strike. The blows resounded throughout the corridor.

Madame Nathalie remained rooted to the spot. Sarah stood
before her, with panting bosom and eyes flashing fire. For an
instant it looked as though the ceremony would be spoiled, but
other members of the company rushed between the two and they
were hurried in different directions.

The next day she was summoned to the office of M. Thierry,
director of the Comedie.

" Your conduct has been disgraceful, mademoiselle ! " he
said, " and your engagement should be cancelled immediately,
but I have decided to give you one chance to make amends.
Waiting in the next room are Madame Nathalie, and two other
socidtaires. You will apologise to Madame Nathalie, in their
presence, and in mine."

" Apologise to that woman who injured my baby sister ? "
cried Sarah. " Never ! "

" Think, mademoiselle," urged Thierry. " Unless you do so
you leave the Comedie ! "

Leave the Comedie ! After all the torturing months of prepara-
tion, after all the help she had received from the Due de Momy,
from Camille Doucet and her other friends, after the hard struggle
at the Conservatoire. Sarah saw her mother's bitter eyes, heard
her scornful tongue.

She knew that her admission to the Comedie Frangaise had
been an honour and a favour which her performances at the
Conservatoire did not justify. She knew that if her engagement was
cancelled it was possible that she might look in vain for other

92 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

employment ; that every manager in Paris might be turned against
her. More, she knew that her family would regard her leaving
the Comedie as a personal insult to them, and it would, she realised,
be no longer feasible for her to live at home. Sarah thought of
her Aunt Rosine's triumphant " I told you so," and shuddered.

But, on the other hand, she knew that she was in the right.
A sense of tremendous injustice weighed upon her. This woman had
struck her little sister, and she had administered a deserved
correction. What though she were one of the oldest societaires
at the Fran9ais. She should be the one to apologise !

It took Sarah some five minutes to arrive at this, her final,
conclusion, and then, turning to M. Thierry, she said :

" If Madame Nathahe will apologise to Regine, I will apologise
to her ! "

M. Thierry looked at her incredulously.

" You mean that you will allow a question of pure pride to
interfere with your career and perhaps spoil your future ? " he
demanded.

" I mean that if the whole incident occurred again, I would
slap Madame Nathahe twice as hard ! " said Sarah angrily.

M. Thierry turned back to his papers.

" Very well, mademoiselle," he said ; " you have until
to-morrow afternoon to change your mind ! "

Sarah did not apologise, and she was not immediately sent
away. Her powerful friends who had supported her in her effort
to enter the theatre made representations to M. Thierry, and,
much against his will, he agreed to give the young actress another
chance.

But Madame Nathahe nursed her spite, and when, a few weeks

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 93

later, Sarah was given the role of Dolores, in the play of that name
by Brouihet, she contrived to influence the director to take the
part away from the girl, almost on the eve of production,
and give it to Madame Favart.

No sooner did Sarah learn this than she bounded into M.
Thierry's office.

" Give me my contract ! " she cried. " I resign ! I will
have nothing more to do with your theatre ! "

The same evening she was again a free agent. She had left
the Comedie. When she returned home to inform her mother of
her action, the latter took it coolly.

" Very well," said Julie, " you need look for no further help
from me, or from my friends. Hereafter you can do with your
life as you wish ! You are emancipated ! "

Sarah was then eighteen years old. From that day on she
was free of maternal control, and a few weeks later she secured
a minor part at the Gymnase. After playing this, she was
promised a leading part in a play called Launching a Wife,
but this promise was not kept. In her anger, Sarah left the
theatre, packed her trunk, and, with less than a thousand francs,
left suddenly for Spain.

In Madrid she developed a passion for bull-fighting. At one
moment, according to Caroline, her maid, she became engaged to
Juan Lopez, a famous matador, but at a dinner given to celebrate
the engagement, which was attended by famous personalities of
the corrida, Lopez drank too copiously of the strong vintages of
Spain, and Sarah, disgusted, left him and the dinner party
and returned to her hotel. This incident decided her return
to Paris, and, borrowing the necessary money from the manager

94 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

of the hotel, who had known her father, she left the next day.

This was the first of two mysterious visits Sarah paid to Spain.
Of the second, which occurred some eleven years later, practically
nothing is known. ***■

'Now began the most painful period of Sarah Bernhardt 's
life. No longer able to face the daily tirades of her mother and
her aunts, who called her lazy, idle and wilful, she left the former's
flat and took one of her own in the rue Duphot, close by the
Madeleine.

She drifted away from her family and the friends of her
childhood and made questionable acquaintances in the fast-
living set where her beauty, originality and wit made her
much sought after. She became a well-known figure in certain
salons and in the restaurants d la mode.

Now and again she played small parts in various theatres,
but long intervals occurred between the occasions on which she
worked. Her figure remained excessively slender, boyish and
agile. It never became really full, but its slenderness was less
noticeable after she had given birth to her son, Maurice. It
then to some extent rounded out, only to become thin again when
she was forty, at which epoch she invented the shoulder-length
glove to conceal the skeleton-like outline of her arms.

The birth of her son was the event which changed Sarah's
whole life. It gave her something to live for. Until then she
had been a wilful, spoiled, eccentric girl, given to tremendous
fits of temper which were invariably followed by prolonged
periods of despondency.

She had few intimates, and the friends who gathered round her
were not of the sort likely to set her feet in the right direction.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 95

She had spells of strenuous energy, which would be succeeded by
fits of laziness lasting sometimes for months, during which time
she would live parsimoniously on small sums borrowed from stage
acquaintances or from her mother's friend, the Due de Morny,
who still remained faithful to the child for whom he had done so
much.

Nothing, unless it was her eccentricity, distinguished her from
the hundreds of other lovely girls at that time adorning the Paris
stage. She had given up her attempts at painting, after moderate
successes gained at several salons ; the passion for modelling had
not yet seized her, and, although she had undoubtedly immense
talent for acting, she neglected to develop it, with the result that
her theatrical engagements were few and far between.

She and her young sister Jeanne, then aged only fourteen,
would often be seen at public balls of the better class, dancing
with a cohort of young men, amongst whom were included some of
the wildest members of society. She was frequently a guest at
smart but somewhat questionable entertainments in the homes of
titled acquaintances, whose riches were expressed in the luxury and
the beautiful women with whom they surrounded themselves, and
in the amount of rare wines they and their friends consumed.

Of average height, exceptionally slim, with blue eyes alternately
flashing wit and fire, and invariably costumed in the latest fashion,
Sarah, as she neared her majority, was in danger, despite her great
talent, of falling into that bottomless pit which still exists in
Paris for beautiful girls, and out of which it is so difficult to climb.

She was a member of one of the fastest sets of a fast city, and
only a miracle could have been expected to save her. Her health
was bad, she had frequent spells of coughing, and the tell-tale

96 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

flush of fever was constantly on her cheeks. To all admonitions,
however, she would reply that, if her life was to be a short one,
she had better enjoy it to the full while there was yet time.

But the needful miracle happened. As the result of an ardent
love affair, almost certainly with a man of princely family, she
gave birth to a boy, whom she named Maurice.

As in her own case, the accouchement was a difficult one, and
complications ensued which rendered her recovery doubtful.
The child was under-sized but robust, and from his birth he
resembled his mother.

Motherhood to Sarah was at once a boon and a scourge that
whipped her flagging consciousness of right and wrong.

It brought her face to face with the hard realities of the path-
ways of error, but it gave her the strength of character she
had lacked and which was to lead her up from and out of these
dangerous pathways. It provided her with the one thing that
had been so far lacking in her character.

Motherhood gave Sarah Bernhardt ambition.

If from then on she became greedy of praise and publicity,
she at the same time became a strenuous worker ; if she was hard
with those whom she used as stepping-stones, she was harder
with herself ; if she allowed her tongue to become caustic and
her manner overbearing, it was because life had been revealed to
her in its veritable aspect, and because she realised the supreme
necessity of building a wall between herself and her past.

Intolerant of criticism, exquisite in her art, mighty in labour,
Sarah Bernhardt lavished on her tiny son a love she had never
believed she could feel for any human being.

Every aim of her existence was to provide for him while

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 97

he was young the shield of respectability she herself had never
known. -

Proud though she might be to the exterior world, she was
humility itself before the cradle of her child.

And her struggle was no easy one. She told me of it one day
on board ship while we were travelling to the Near East,
and so deep an impression did her words make on me that I can
remember them almost textually.

" When my son was born," she said, " I had, for all my
fortune, the sum of two hundred francs. If it had not been for
Madame Guerard, who officiated at the birth of my child as she
had officiated at my own, I do not know what I should have
done.

" I owed ten times two hundred francs in small tradesmen's
bills, scattered about the city. My mother was ill, and could not
be appealed to. I was ashamed to go to my other friends, such
as the Due de Morny, who would have been only too glad to
have helped me, and I forbade Madame Guerard to say a word to
anyone about my predicament.

" When my sister Regine came to see me, she was told that
I had a contagious disease and could not be seen. Later on it
was given out that I had left Paris for a holiday in the country.
* " When the first week was up I had scarcely a sou. It was
then that I determined to appeal to the one man whom duty
should have compelled to aid me, and I sent a letter to the
Prince, imploring him to take pity upon me and upon our child.

" The Prince's reply was brutality itself : ' I know a woman
named Bernhardt,' he wrote, ' but I do not know her child.'
The note enclosed — fifty francs !

98 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" I persuaded myself that there was a mistake. I could not
beheve that the man I had loved could be so cruel.

" I dragged myself out of bed and went, faint and ill, to a
mansion in the rue de Lille, where the Prince was that night
giving a joyous fete.

" I was shown into an ante-room and waited nearly an hour
before the Prince finally condescended to see me.

" Standing there in the doorway like a magistrate come to
judge — to judge me, the mother of his child whom I carried in
my armS' — he asked me what I wanted. I could not believe his
attitude.

" ' I have come to show you your child, and to demand your
recognition of him ! ' I answered.

" The Prince's reply was to become purple with anger, to
thump his fist on the table, and not only to deny the child, but
to make the most monstrous allegation conceivable.

" Nearly fainting, I went from the house in tears, my baby's
cries mingling in my ears with the music of the dance and the
shouts of the reckless party within." *

Such was the first great trial of the woman who was to become
the most famous tragic actress on the world's stage.

The fortitude that Sarah Bernhardt gave proof of then became
the basis of the strong character which slowly formed from that
day onwards. Scorned by the man who of aU men had best the
right to help her, Sarah bitterly determined to make the males of
the species pay for the agony of her calvary.

This was the turning point of Sarah Bernhardt 's life. In one
respect the world owes the evil Prince ■ — — a debt, for had he
recognised the child, had he lavished money and tenderness upon

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 99

the mother, there is a probabiHty that she would never have found
the will and determination which were the earnest of her future
success. Never was the adage that courage is born of necessity
truer than in the case of the young Sarah Bernhardt.

''Forced to work to support her child, whom she sent to a pro-
fessional nurse in Normandy, Sarah laboured with a fierceness
and a tenacity unequalled in the history of the stage.

She found work at the Gymnase, at the Porte St. Martin,
at the Vaudeville, at the Lyric and at other theatres. Never
allowing herself a moment's rest, studying her parts far into the
night, arriving always the first for rehearsals, she gamely set foot
on rung after rung of the ladder which she had herself set up.

Her reputation, which had been so sadly tarnished by her
previous mistakes, became once more satisfactory. She enjoyed
the friendship of influential managers and playwrights. It was
not long before she became marked for success. Critics began
to comment favourably on her work, especially in La Biche au
Bois, a play at the Porte St. Martin, which gave her her first
opportunity as a star, and which resulted in her being offered
a contract by M. Fournier for three years. *

Before she' accepted this contract, however, Lambert Thiboust,
a well-known playwright, asked her to take the name part in
La Berghre d'lvry, and she accepted' — subject, of course, to the
approval of the directors of the Ambigu theatre, where the piece
was to be played.

These directors were two men named Faille and Chilly.
Chilly had a mistress, Laurence Gerard, whom he desired to have
the part. To please Thiboust, however, they consented to give
Sarah a hearing in the rehearsal room of the Ambigu, and thither

100 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

she went and recited a part she had learned at the Comedie
Fran9aise in On ne hadine pas avec V amour. There was complete
silence until she had finished, and then Faille rose and shook his
head sadly.

" My poor little girl," he said, with assumed sympathy, " you
cannot take this part ! You are too thin- — and, besides, you are
in no way equipped for the theatre ! You are not even a good
actress ! "

Sarah could hardly believe her ears.

" Tenez," pursued Faille, " here is Chilly, who has heard you
from behind that curtain. Ask him what he thinks."

Sarah turned to Chilly, the little director who was later
to be intimately associated with her career,

" Lambert Thiboust is crazy ! " said Chilly shortly. " You
would be no good in the part, mademoiselle I We cannot give
it to you ! "

As Sarah went out, more or less in a daze, she passed Laurence
Gerard on her way in. Then she realised why she had lost the
part.

Later on. Chilly became famous as co-director of the Odeon.
Faille never succeeded, and years later, taking pity on him, Sarah
Bernhardt acted in a benefit performance to establish a fund
for his old age.

Sarah was ever generous in such matters. She never forgave
an enemy who remained powerful, but she could always forgive
and forget when poverty or misery overtook those who had done
her harm.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her loi

CHAPTER X

Following the fiasco of her lost engagement at the Ambigu,
Sarah Bernhardt visited her old and faithful friend, Camille
Doucet. She was kept waiting some minutes in an ante-room,
and, on being bidden eventually to go into his office, almost ran
into a tall, handsome young man, who had been in conference
with Doucet. The man stopped and apologised, and Sarah was
conscious of two deep-set blue eyes regarding her with a real
interest.

" Is this not Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt ? " the tall man
asked. On Sarah's hesitating admission that he was right, the man
continued :

" I have just been talking to Doucet about you. Come in,
and we will see him together."

Sarah followed him, not knowing who her new acquaintance
was, nor understanding the nature of his business with her.
Once in Camille Doucet's office, however, she was quickly informed.

" This is Pierre Berton, junior," said Doucet, introducing
her, " He would like to see you a member of his company at
the Odeon."

Sarah was overwhelmed. Pierre Berton was then one of the
most popular actors on the French stage ; he was also, after
Mounet-SuUy, the handsomest. To have been singled out by
him for a part at the Odeon was an honour she had never dared

102 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

dream of. There was no actor in France with whom she would
sooner have worked.

Sarah was too much taken aback at the sudden proposition
to say much. Extending her hand to Berton, she thanked him
with a smile.

" There is, however, an obstacle," went on Doucet. " I
have just learned this morning that the Odeon staff has been
reorganised and that Chilly has been named co-director with
Duquesnel."

Sarah's spirits fell like lead. How could she hope for an
engagement at the Odeon, when one of the men who would have
to sign her contract was the same who had, only a few days pre-
viously, said publicly that she could not act ? Seeing her down-
cast Berton tried to reassure her.

" You need not be afraid of Chilly ! " he said. " I have
spoken to Duquesnel, and he is on our side. Chilly will have to
agree ! "

An appointment was made for Sarah to see Duquesnel on the
following day and, after some further conversation, Berton offered
to accompany Sarah home. In the cab Sarah asked him what
was the reason for his interest in her.

" Since the day I saw you in Les Femmes Savantes at the
Comedie Frangaise," Berton answered, " I have believed that
you would one day become a very great actress, but I believe
also that you need someone to aid you with the directors, who do
not understand your temperament. I have watched you for two
years, and I am prepared to help you at the Odeon, as far as
possible, if you will allow me to do so."

Sarah's reply, Berton told me in later years after I had

Pierre Berton, Husband of Mme. Berton, and one of Sarah's Earliest

Intimate Friends.

p. 102.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 103

become his wife, was to seize and kiss his hand impul-
sively.

From that moment began the wonderful romance which
developed between these two — Pierre Berton, the accomplished
and successful actor, and Sarah Bernhardt, the debutante of
twenty-two. Their relationship lasted a little over two years.
When it finished — we shall see why presently — Sarah was as
great an actress as he an actor. In two short years she had
leaped to fame.

They met, as arranged, in Duquesnel's office at the Odeon,
on the day following Sarah's meeting with Berton and Doucet.
Sarah was immediately taken with Duquesnel, a mild, blue-eyed
man, endowed with prodigious activity and with the name
of being possibly the greatest metteur-en-scene in Paris. He was
exceedingly courteous to her and set her at ease immediately
by declaring that he thought her engagement could easily be
arranged.

She asked about Chilly. " You shall see him to-morrow,"
promised Duquesnel. Sarah looked at Berton.

" I have spoken to him," said the actor, " and he has promised
to leave the engagement of the company in my own hands, pro-
viding the salaries and the lengths of the contracts are supervised
and agreed to by him and Monsieur Duquesnel."

Later on Sarah discovered that what had actually happened
was that Chilly, spoken to the evening before, had flatly dechned
to consider Sarah as a member of the company.

" She is not an actress, and shows no promise of ever being
one ! " he repeated.

And then Pierre Berton had threatened to resign, so that

104 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

in face of this threatened calamity Chilly had given way. He
had insisted, however, that the responsibility for Sarah's engage-
ment should rest with Berton and Duquesnel.

The next day Sarah went to Duquesnel's office again, and was
introduced to Chilly, who presented her with her contract.

" Believe me, mademoiselle," he said, " had I been alone in
this matter, you would not have been engaged ! "

" If you had been alone here I would not have consented to
sign ! " said Sarah haughtily.

For months after that, she told me, she hated Chilly. In
reality, however, he was a decent little fellow, and a man of
great ability, whose only fault was his obstinacy. Later on he
and Sarah became fast friends, and when Sarah left the Odeon,
to return to the Comedie Fran9aise as the triumphant idol of the
French stage, it was Chilly who went on his knees to her and
implored her to reconsider her decision.

Sarah entered the Odeon in 1866. In 1868 she was famous.
In 1872 she re-entered the Comedie Fran9aise, where she
remained eight years. In 1882 she was married, and in 1889
became a widow.

I give these dates now because the period comprised by them
was that in which Sarah Bernhardt reached the supreme pinnacle
of her glory, and it was during this period, also, that the most
romantic episodes of her life occurred.

Le Jen del' Amour etdu Hasard (The Game of Love and Luck),
by Marivaux, was the piece in which Sarah made her debut
at the Odeon. Berton and Duquesnel were mortified. Chilly
was triumphant : Sarah had failed !

There was no mistaking the failure. Scarcely any applause

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 105

was vouchsafed the young actress and so conspicuous was her lack
of success that the piece was withdrawn within a few weeks,
after playing to half -empty houses.

Chilly wanted to break her contract, but Berton and Duquesnel
restrained him. Berton gave it as his opinion that Sarah was
made for tragedy, whereas the play by Marivaux was a comedy,
and Sarah's part obviously unsuited to her.

Among the famous people who were in the audience the night
Sarah Bernhardt made her dehut at the Odeon was Alexandre
Dumas the elder. After the play was over Sarah overheard
Duquesnel ask him :

" What do you think of the young Sarah ? "

" She has the head of a virgin and the body of a broom-
stick ! " retorted Dumas, dryly.

Sarah was then earning the munificent sum of 100 francs
(four pounds) a month. From the estate of her father she still
received a small amount' — not more than 200 francs monthly,
and on this income was obliged to live.

For several months she worked as an understudy, Chilly
obstinately refusing to consent to her taking any important roks.

During this period the love of Pierre Berton for his erratic
little protegee grew enormously. On more than one occasion he
asked her to marry him, but Sarah refused, on the ground that it
would be unfair to the woman who for years had lived with Berton
as his wife, and who had presented him with four children.

The fact that Berton was willing and even anxious to abandon
this woman (his wife in all but name) and his family indicates
the depth of his passion for Sarah Bernhardt. He confessed to
me in later life after our marriage that " the days that Sarah

io6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Bernhardt consented to devote to me were like pages from im-
mortality. One felt that one could not die ! "

That Sarah returned his love is a fact too well known to need
confirmation here, but I have always doubted whether she gave
to Pierre the full and sincere depth of the passion he brought to
her. Sarah's was a nature too complex to harbour any deep
feeling for long.

There is also the indisputable fact that at this moment she
was living solely for the stage, the animating force within her
being a determination that her baby son should never lack for
money or advantages. Neither has he, throughout his long life.

Life at the Odeon was toil fierce and unremitting, but Sarah
loved it. She would wake at nine o'clock and read over her
parts, both in bed and while she was dressing. At eleven o'clock,
and often again in the afternoon, there were rehearsals of plays
quite different from the one that was to be given at night.

Her evident desire to work, combined with the glorious quality
of her voice, which was already becoming renowned among play-
goers, brought even the manager. Chilly, round to her side.
Reliability and hard work were his two fetishes. He could not
forgive Sarah her thin legs, but he was madly enthusiastic over
her voice.

" Oh ! if you could only act ! " he said to her on more than
one occasion.

Fine acting is not precisely a gift of the gods ; it is the ulti-
mate result of a willingness to acquire technique by constant
attention to petty details. No actor ever became great over-
night who had not spent weary months in the acquisition of
technique.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 107

Now, three principal acquirements go to make up stage tech-
nique. First, there is what is known as stage presence, or the
abihty to lose one's o-s^tl individuality in the part one is playing.
Secondl3^ there is the speaking voice, which should be so perfected
that a whisper may carry drama, pathos or humour to the topmost
gallery and be understood. Thirdly, there is memory.

Sarah had the voice and she certainly had a marvellous memory.
She could take the book of a new part at night and return on the
following afternoon with the role committed to memory. Once
she had learned it, Sarah never forgot a part, even though she might
be playing two different pieces, afternoon and night.

WTien Berton wrote Zaza, the play for which he is best known
in England, she went over it with him, taking a whole night to do
it. The next day Berton was to read it to an audience of managers
and producers. While he was reading the third act, Sarah
objected to his way of interpreting one of the parts.

" It should go like this," she said — and forthwith she recited
for fifteen minutes words which she had only read once. On
comparison with the book it was found that she had not made a
single mistake.

In the '8o's I attended a picnic at St. Germain, and heard Sarah
recite a part in Iphiginie, the first play in which she appeared at
the Comedie Fran9aise, and in which she played only on two
occasions during her long career. There was never a moment
after she became internationally famous when Sarah could
not recite out of her prodigious memory the whole of the words
of any one of fifty or sixty different plays.

I have said that her voice was becoming known in Paris.

io8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

One day Georges Sand came to her dressing-room. Looking very
mysterious, she said :

" There is a gentleman outside who has fallen in love with your
voice ! "

" Send him away ! " retorted Sarah petulantly. She was in
a bad humour, in consequence of a quarrel with Berton.

" You cannot send this man away, my dear ! " said Madame
Sand. "He is the Prince ! "

" Never mind ; I do not want to see him, Prince or no Prince,"
declared the young actress.

After much coaxing, however, she consented to meet the
" gentleman in love with her voice," and descended to the stage,
where she found Prince Napoleon talking with Louis BouiUiet.
Sarah shook his hand, instead of kissing it, as was the custom,
and said never a word. The Prince was furious.

" She is spiteful, your little kitten," he said to Georges Sand.
" She is a Madonna, sire ! " said the authoress.
" A Madonna who acts like a devil ! " retorted the Prince,
shortly, and, turning on his heel, he walked away.

He came back many times, however, and was often one of a
party in Sarah's dressing-room. The news that she was the
recipient of royal favour soon got abroad, and sarcasms were
printed in some of the liberal weeklies. When she read them,
Sarah sent a note to the editors :

" Criticise my performances on the stage if it pleases you,
but my private life should be free of insult. Furthermore, I
have loyal friends who will protect my name with their
swords."

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 109

This, too, was published, and all Paris laughed at the actress
who thought it an insult that her name should be linked with
that of a prince. Other people in the profession thought it a
pose, but Sarah was quite sincere. She was fascinated by the
smooth, cynical flow of the Prince's conversation, and she could
not openly bid him remove himself from her presence. At the
bottom of her heart, however, she disliked him profoundly and
was at small pains to conceal it.

Once an artist of revolutionary tendencies, one Paul Des-
hayes, entered Sarah's dressing-room, to find there Prince
Napoleon, Madame Sand and several others. Deshayes was
seeking his gloves, which he had left in the room a few minutes
before. Turning to the Prince he said curtly :

" You are sitting on my gloves, monsieur ! "

The Prince, turning red with anger at this unceremonious
mode of address, took the gloves and flung them on the floor.

" I thought the chair was clean ! " he said contemptuously.

Sarah Bernhardt jumped to her feet, picked up the gloves, and
handed them to Deshayes.

Then, turning to the Prince, she said hotly :

" Politeness used to be considered a privilege of kings, sir,
but I perceive that they do not teach it to princes ! "

This incident also found its way into print and Sarah's reputa-
tion gained another notch. All this time she had yet to score
a genuine success on the stage.

This came towards the end of her first year at the Odeon,
in circumstances which were much commented on at the time.
All Paris was in arms against Alexandre Dumas, the most mahgned
author who has ever lived. On the night of the premiere of Kean,

no Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Dumas appeared in a box at the Odeon accompanied by his
mistress, Ada Montrin.

Cries came from all over the house calling on him to " send
the woman away." Dumas tried to speak, but his voice was
drowned in cat-calls. Hundreds of students stood on their
seats, chanting an obscene song that had been written about
Dumas.

Finally the woman and Dumas both left' — the latter to take
refuge behind the wings, and the former to depart from his life
for ever.

Duquesnel, Chilly, Berton and the whole company were in
terror when the curtain was about to be raised. They expected
a warm reception and — they got it Berton, who was playing
the part of Kean, could not make his voice heard beyond the
footlights. For a moment there was a question of cancelling the
performance.

Then Sarah Bernhardt, in the first big role of her career — that
of Anna Danby — came upon the stage, and, from the first words, a
hush settled over the house. Her glorious voice filled the theatre.

Cahn and unflurried, though in reality intensely nervous, Sarah
continued speaking her part. The words of the poet were given
their exact intonation, every syllable distinct from its neighbour,
and fell upon the breathless house like the limpid notes of a
flute.

When she had finished, there was at first silence, and then a
roar of approval. Sixty students, their hands locked together,
rushed round the house and threatened to invade the stage.
Sarah, appalled, believed it was a demonstration against her.
Her cue came to leave the stage. She rushed off and up to her

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her iii

dressing-room, whence she could dimly hear the unceasing roar
from the theatre.

Duquesnel, rushing in, found her white as a sheet with terror.
Duquesnel himself was pale, and perspiring in great drops.

" Come ! " he said to Sarah, extending his hand, " they want
you ! "

Sarah shuddered and shrank backwards.

" Come ! " said Duquesnel again, impatiently. " I tell you
they want you ! — Hark, cannot you hear them calling ? "

Through the open door the din from the house came with
greater volume. Sarah could not distinguish a word.

" They are mad about you, child ! " cried Duquesnel, as he
saw she did not believe him. " They will not let the play go on
until you go on and speak to them ! "

Then Sarah understood that this was not failure. It was
triumph, success, glory ! She took Duquesnel's arm and went
hesitatingly on to the stage, not even noticing that she was still
attired in the kimono which she used as a wrap between the
acts.

When she appeared before the curtain pandemonium broke
lose. " Sarah ! " " Sarah ! " " Our Sarah ! " the audience
yelled.

And " Our Sarah " she was to the populace of Paris from that
day onwards.

She was famous. She hurried back into the wings and brought
on Berton Senior, and they gave him an ovation too. But always
there was the chant : " Sarah ! " " Our Sarah ! "

The students were mad. Sarah resolved to win them over
to Dumas, and sent word for him to come on the stage. But

112 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Dumas had gone, suffocated by tears at what he beUeved bitterly
to be the assassination of his brain-child. The next morning,
when he learned the truth, he sent Sarah a note thanking her.
Sarcey was the only critic who did not join in the chorus of
praise which followed in the press. Writing in the Courrier de
la Semaine he stated :

" I have nothing to add to my previous opinion of Made-
moiselle Sarah Bernhardt, who, it appears, had some success
with the noisy students the other night. Her voice is exquisite,
certainly, but she is just as certainly not an actress."

The original means Sarah took to humble Sarcey and to bring
him to her side will be described in the next chapter. Meanwhile,
he remained her most bitter and most persevering critic.

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Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 113

CHAPTER XI

Out of a multitude of aspiring actresses Sarah Bernhardt, at the
age of twenty-four, had jumped into celebrity practically in a
single night. The success of Kean continued ; the theatre was
packed night after night. Berton, hitherto the greatest figure on
the stage of the Odeon, himself had to bow before the woman whose
genius he had been the first to perceive.

Their intimacy continued, though necessarily in secret, on
account of Berton's other attachments. Success turned Sarah's
shock head a little, but for many months she remained faithful
to the loyal man who had befriended her and had made her
victory possible. Their idyll was the talk of the theatre. No one
then dreamed how bitterly she would turn against him in later
years.

She had no lack of other admirers. They flocked round her.
There was Jules Garnier, and most notable of all perhaps Fran9ois
Coppee, whose genius Sarah discovered in an odd way.

She was dining in the house of a friend and was introduced
to a small, pale-faced young man, whose wealth of dark hair was
smoothed back from his brow. " He had," Sarah told me later,
" the eyes of a dreamer and the head of a saint."

Coppee shyly shook her hand, and seemed to want to say

something, but to be too bashful.

" Come, Fran9ois," urged Madame Agar, the great tragedienne,

H

114 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

who was the hostess, " you have been wanting to meet Mile.
Bernhardt for weeks, and now that you have the chance you are
dumb ! "

" He has written a play," she explained to Sarah, " and he
thinks that you should be the one to play in it."

" It was written for you," said the young poet, simply.
Fran9ois Coppee was then unknown, and Sarah had never
heard his name before. But the subtle compliment of writing
a play round her touched her heart, and she determined to grant
him his wish.

" We will hear it at once ! " she decided.
Two hours later she had enthusiastically promised to make
Duquesnel and Chilly produce the piece, which was called Le
Passant, and within four months it was produced at a benefit
matinee. Then, after it had proved an enormous success, it was
included in the regular Odeon repertoire, which it has never since
left.

If Kean had been a triumph for Sarah, Le Passant was a
vindication. There had been many to hint that her success in
Kean was only an accident due to fortuitous circumstances and
to the fact that she was popular with the students who thronged
the theatre on the first night. But when she carried all before
her in Le Passant, she proved herself to be the great actress that
she really was.

Every critic except the dour Francisque Sarcey, who still
persisted in ignoring her talent, joined in an enthusiastic chorus
of praise, and they said much more about her than they did about
Agar, who was in reality the star of the piece.

Duquesnel was triumphant ; Chilly was delighted. They had

Sarah Bernhardt in Le Passant.

p. 114.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 115

found another star worthy of the greatness of their theatre.
They were summoned to play Le Passant at Court, in the mag-
nificent setting of the Tuileries. The Emperor Louis Napoleon,
after the performance, descended from his throne and kissed
Sarah on both cheeks, afterwards presenting her with a diamond
brooch set with the Imperial initials.

This brooch was not among the property of the tragedienne
which was recently sold by auction in Paris, and I believe there
was a story that, pressed for funds during a trip to London after
the revolution, she pawned it and never subsequently regained
possession of it. She was like that all her life. Always the
desperate need for money, always the large extravagance, the
royal expenditures that she could not afford !

This was the age -of literary giants. Neither politics, nor even
religion, had half the power to stir the passions of the educated
masses that a literary war between two editors or two dramatists
possessed. The two great rivals for public popularity were Victor
Hugo and Alexandre Dumas the elder, and there was a deal of
fanaticism in the fervour of their respective partisans. Public
meetings were held denouncing one or the other. Victor Hugo's
political martyrdom was of recent memory, and this gentle
character, this splendid genius, was the prey of attacks which
were at once unscrupulous and false. Newspapers were started
by chiefs of the different literary factions, and dozens of duels,
some of them mortal, resulted from the wanton attacks on the
reputations of two of the greatest men of the time.

Sarah's first meeting with Victor Hugo occurred about a
week after the premiere of Le Passant, in which she took the
adolescent male role of Zanetto. It suited her to perfection, for

ii6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

she had retained her boyish slimness and her general allure of
gaminerie.

After the performance she was presented to Hugo, who had
been watching the play from the depths of a loge. Public opinion
was running high in Paris at the moment, and it was considered
inadvisable that either Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas should
show themselves in public.

Sarah had ignorantly allowed herself to be carried away by
the fulminations of the Dumas clique at the Odeon, and actually
shuddered when she held her hand out to Hugo to be kissed.

" Ah, mademoiselle," remarked the great author, with a sad
smile, " I see that my greatest trial is to come in your prejudice
against me ! "

Sarah was touched, and could not bring herself to believe that
this meek man, with the deep marks of suffering about his eyes,
was really the monster his enemies would have the world believe.
It was currently rumoured that Hugo was an anarchist, that he
had deserted his wife, that he had five mistresses at one and the
same time, and that his life consisted of one immorality after
another. He was accused of many political crimes also — and
with as much reason.

" I am my own judge of men, monsieur," said Sarah.

Victor Hugo bowed low, muttered a word of adieu and later
wrote Sarah as follows :

" Mademoiselle,

" Yesterday I was presented to you, trembling lest
you might not accede to my request and play in my Ruy Bias. But
I was tongue-tied in the presence of your beauty and your charity ;

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 117

I, who am a man of words, was dumb. I pray you, see Chilly ;
he knows my wishes. Believe, mademoiselle, in my sincere
admiration,

" Victor Hugo."

Sarah saw Chilly, only to be informed by him that it had
been decided to put off the revival of Rtty Bias until the following
season. Instead, when Le Passant was finished, Sarah played as
star in three plays which definitely established her position as
one of the greatest actresses of the period. These plays were
L' Autre, a delicious comedy by Georges Sand, Le Bdtard and
Theuriet's Jean Marie.

Before she could play Ruy Bias, the war of 1870 broke out.

Before we go into the war experiences of Sarah Bernhardt,
experiences which, moreover, forged her character, into a species of
flexible steel, two episodes must be mentioned which have been
published before, but which, in my opinion, have been scurrilously
misinterpreted. One refers to the fire in her fiat in the rue Auber,
near the Opera, and the other to the serious illness that followed
one of Sarah's everlasting practical jokes — which this time took
the form of trying to make the world believe that she was dead !

Sarah had, as before stated, taken a seven-room flat in the
rue Auber which, with the aid of certain of her family, who were
now only too willing to resume their relationship with her, she
had somewhat luxuriously furnished. That in this connection
she went heavily into debt to various furniture dealers, decorators
and the like I do not doubt, for such became her invariable
practice in later life. From the day she jumped into fame,
she was invariably surrounded by dealers anxious to sell her all

ii8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

sorts of things, from jewelry to houses, and from pianos to horses
and carriages. These men knew that her salary at the Od^on
was still only i6o francs per month, on which she could certainly
barely afford an attic. They knew also that the income she
received from her father's estate had been greatly diminished,
and was now less than 200 francs monthly.

With less than 500 francS' — twenty pounds — a month, and
with the inevitable extra expenses incidental to her career, what
could Sarah Bernhardt be expected to afford ? Her mother
could spare her nothing. Her aunt Rosine, in an effort to placate
the girl for the many slights of childhood, had given her two
ponies and a smart little carriage, but this, at the same time, cost
a good deal to keep up. None of her other relatives gave her
anything. When she appealed to them they would say : " Why
do you ask us ? You are a famous actress, and famous actresses
can always have money ! "

How true that was, Sarah had early found out. I do not
think it was any particular regard for morality which kept her
from treading the path so many of her sister actresses were
obliged to tread, and from procuring herself one or more rich
protectors ; it was rather that Sarah's whole life now was bound
up with the stage, and that in her love-affairs she consequently
never strayed beyond its charmed circle.

I do not say that Sarah Bernhardt was any less or any more
" immoral "—and we must try and remember, we readers of a
d fferent race, that the moral code of 1870 was not that of to-day —
than were the half-dozen other leading actresses of the time ; but
I do assert that she never formed a liaison merely for the sake of
the protection and wealth it could give her.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 119

When Sarah loved, when this briUiant woman gave herself,
it was always for her art, and to someone who could assist her in
the material realisation of her lofty and ambitious dreams.
Such a thing as forming an alliance merely to rid herself of the
burden of poverty probably never even entered her mind, which
was always lifted above the sordid things of hfe. But when, as in
the case of Pierre Bert on, she was offered the love of a great and a
noble character, or when, as in the case of Damala, she was swept
off her feet by a romantic passion, she succumbed willingly enough.

A list of the men whom Sarah Bernhardt loved and by whom
she was loved reads like a biographical index of the great French-
men of the nineteenth century. It includes actors, painters,
sculptors, architects, cartoonists, poets, authors, and playwrights,
but not one idle rich man or rich man's son !

It is to be doubted whether Bert on, Chiry or Duquesnel helped
her to furnish the fiat in the rue Auber, and it is therefore some-
what of a mystery how she managed to assemble the strange
setting which framed her at this period of her hfe. Her taste was
all Louis XV., and quaint bowlegged chairs and tables were
scattered round her in great disorder.

Sarah's was ever a careless nature and, being extremely im-
perious as well as chronically penniless, she could not keep a maid.
She had her aged grandmother hving with her for a period, and
she had taken her baby from its hired nurse and installed him in a
nursery at her own home. The child took up the grandmother's
time, and the household work seldom got done, except when
Regine, Sarah's wild and hoydenish little sister, could be persuaded
upon to do her share.

" I shall never forget my first visit to Sarah's flat," said my

120 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

husband to me once. " It was on a Saturday afternoon ; we
were going over a part together, and I had promised to finish the
recital at Sarah's home. I arrived about three o'clock, and was
met at the door by a tumble-haired whirlwind in an old chemise
and skirt, whom I with difficulty recognised as Regine, Sarah's
little sister. Regine looked as if she had not had a wash for a
week, and perhaps she hadn't. She had great smudges of grime
on her face, and her hands were black.

" She dragged me into the salon, and here I got ano'ther
shock, for the room was in the most frightful mess you can imagine.
Empty wine bottles rolled about on the carpet ; the remains of a
meal stood partly on the mantelshelf and partly on the table, all
mixed up with sheets of manuscript, which I saw were books of
the plays which Sarah had appeared in. Photographs in gilt
frames were here and there, most of them tumbled on their faces,
and over all was a thick layer of dust. I had to dirty two of my
handkerchiefs before one of the chars could be trusted not to soil
my trousers.

" From another room a baby kept up a wail, and I could hear
Sarah talking to it, trying to calm it. Sarah's child was then
nearly five years old, but had the development of a normal child
of three.

" When Sarah finally appeared, it was in a long smock covered
with paint and grease. Her hair was done anyhow, and her wide-
set eyes sparkled with fun as she viewed my distaste for her
surroundings."

During all the time Sarah and he remained intimate friends,
Pierre told me, he could never bring himself to set foot again in
her home.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 121

" It spoiled all my conceptions of her," he said. " In the
theatre she was such a fairylike, delightful creature. One could
not help loving her. But at home ! "

One night, after a gay supper following the theatre, Sarah
returned home to find her flat, in a building situated at the corner
of the rue Auber and the Boulevard Haussmann, in flames.
The fire had started in her own apartment, from a candle in-
cautiously left burning by a maid-of-all-work who occasionally
came to clean up. The blaze had been discovered shortly before
midnight, and at one o'clock in the morning, when Sarah arrived,
it was still confined to three rooms of the flat, but showed symp-
toms of spreading, in spite of the efforts of the firemen.

To her horror, Sarah discovered that nobody knew whether
her baby had been saved or not !

There had been nobody but Maurice in the flat when she had
left it for the theatre that night, with the exception of the char-
woman, who had long since gone. The grandmother and Regine
were both absent in the country. Unless one of the firemen
had seen and rescued the child, therefore, there was every chance
that it was inside the burning building.

The flat was of peculiar construction, because of the angle of
the two streets. One end of it was disconnected from the other
by a passage-way which had doors at both ends. The fire had
started on the rue Auber side, and though it had spread upwards
and downwards, it had not jumped across the court in the rear,
or worked around the corner to the Boulevard Haussmann side,
in which was the nursery,

Sarah took all this in at a glance. Her intense horror and
dread of fire was not even thought of. Brushing aside those

122 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

who tried to hold her back, she dashed into the Boulevard Hauss-
mann entrance, ran up the stairs and into her flat. Groping her
way through the smoke to the nursery, she found her son safe and
sound in a deep sleep. She wrapped him in a blanket and came
down with him into the street. There she collapsed, and was ill
for two days.

When she was well enough to hear the news, they told her that
the whole building had been burned down and that, but for her
courageous intervention, her child would undoubtedly have been
burned to death.

The best proof that Sarah even then possessed a number of
jealous enemies was the statement openly made in the theatrical
world that, weighed down with debt, she had caused the fire her-
self in order to collect the insmrance.

This story, which has since been still more widely spread, is
refuted by the following two facts : first, if Sarah had caused the
fire, she would hardly have left her baby to run the risk of being
burned to death ; secondly, she had not yet paid the premium on
the insurance, and it was consequently null and void. Instead of
her collecting from the insurance company, it was this company,
La Fonciere, as the proprietor of a flat set on fire through care-
lessness, which collected from Sarah.

She was forced to pay the fabulous sum of forty thousand
francs in damages, which she was enabled to do by the proceeds
of a benefit performance at the Odeon, at which Adehna Patti, then
at the height of her fame, sang.

The receipts of this benefit were more than the necessary
forty thousand francs, and with the remainder Sarah was able
to take a flat at No. 4, rue de I'Arcade. It was furnished, how-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 123

ever ; and Sarah was still without the means to furnish a flat for
herself until her late father's man of affairs came and proposed to
arrange a cash payment to her out of her father's estate providing,
she would insure her life in his favour for 250,000 francs. This was
done, and Sarah rented a large flat at the comer of the rue de
Rome, almost opposite the one which had been burned. This
she was careful to insure immediately.

The other episode for which Sarah was much criticised was
her famous practical joke at the Odeon, after a quarrel with
Duquesnel.

A call-boy rushed through the theatre screaming : " Bernhardt
is dead ! Bernhardt is dead ! "

With one accord the entire cast rushed off the stage to Sarah's
dressing-room, where they were met by an extraordinary sight.

Sarah was reclining, dressed completely in white, on a flat couch
placed in the middle of the floor. Her hands were crossed over
her bosom, which appeared to be motionless, and a red stain was
visible on her chin and neck. At the four corners of the couch
were placed gigantic candles, like the cierges used in churches.

Who had placed her like that ? Nobody knew. Her dressing-
maid was in hysterics, and could not be questioned. Duquesnel
came in and, taking in the tableau in a glance, burst into tears.

The performance was stopped and the curtain rung down.
A doctor and an undertaker were hurriedly sent for, and the
audience was informed by the grief-stricken Duquesnel that
" Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt had suddenly passed away."

Then, and then only, did Sarah sit up, kick over the candles
with a sweep of her legs, and amaze and scandalise the mourners
by going into screams of helpless laughter. Duquesnel was white

124 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

with anger. Running to his office, he wrote and signed a note
cancelling her contract, and stating that aftei that night her
services would not be required.

Sarah threw the note in his face and flung herself out of the
theatre. For hours she drove about in the Champs Elysees,
careless of the falling snow. Next day Duquesnel sent her a
note stating that, on reconsideration, she would be permitted to
return, but that an apology would be expected.

A few hours later an emissary from Sarah arrived at the
theatre. " She will not come back until you ask her to do so
on your knees ! " he told Duquesnel. The latter, realising that he
stood in danger of losing his most popular star, went to Sarah's
home and apologised. Sarah reconsidered her remarks about mak-
ing him get on his knees, and admitted that she had only meant to
play a little joke, and had had no idea that it would go as far as
it had. There, except for satirical comments on the " crazy
Bernhardt " in the weekly papers, the matter ended.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 125

CHAPTER XII

Sarah was twenty-six years old when war was declared between
France and Germany. At three o'clock in the afternoon of July
19, 1870, I, a child still in short frocks, was present with my
mother at her apartment in the rue de Rome.

A rehearsal was in progress for some play, the name of which
I have forgotten, and Sarah was reading the script in her beautiful,
expressive voice, running her hand through my hair as she did
so, when a servant came in and announced that she was wanted
at the door.

" What is it ? " Sarah demanded, angry at the interruption.

" A messenger from the Foreign Ministry," said the servant.
" He is in a great hurry and has instructions to deliver his message
to none but yourself, madame, personally."

Sarah laid down the manuscript and went out of the room.
Two minutes later she was back, and I can remember to this
day how white her face was, how brilliant her marvellous eyes.
She held up her hand, in which was a long envelope, and bade
everyone be silent. The twenty or twenty-five people present
were quiet at once and looked at her expectantly.

" We have declared war ! " she cried, and the echo of that
golden voice, vibrating with emotion, is with me yet.

At once the room was in a buzz of excitement. Everybody

126 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

was speaking at once. Theophile Gautier, the bookworm, who
was present, made his voice heard through the din.

" They are mad — mad ! " he exclaimed. Then he went to
Bernhardt.

" From whom comes your information, mademoiselle ? "
he asked.

" From Captain Lescouve, deputy of the chef du cabinet of
Monsieur OUivier."

OUivier was the Premier who had declared war under the
pressure of the " imbecile emperor."

Jane Essler, a famous artiste of her time, who had been sitting
in a chair lazily watching the scene with an expression of calm
indifference, suddenly jumped to her feet.

" Come, let us go to the Boulevards ! " she cried.

" Aux boulevards ! " We were swept away by excitement.

" No ; let us go to the Odeon ! " shouted Sarah, and this new
suggestion met with a frenzy of approval.

" A VOddon ! A V Odeon ! Vive la guerre ! "

When we came down from the flat the Boulevard Haussmann,
or the street now known by that name, was alive with people.
Any passage of vehicles was impossible, so we went on foot through
the rue Auber as far as the Opera.

Here there was an enormous crowd. The great Place was
literally surging with people. On the walls of the Opera itself
huge posters had been pasted but a few minutes before. I
remember that some of our party tore them down and stuffed them
into their pockets as souvenirs. The posters explained the abrupt
action of the Government, and enjoined the people to remain
calm.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 127

" Victory is assured," was one phrase that stands out in my
mind.

Carried along by the crowd, we were swept down the Avenue
de rOpera. Opposite the Theatre Fran^ais was another huge
crowd. Marie Lloyd — an actress who, by the way, had been
Sarah's competitor at the Conservatoire, and who had gained the
first prize which Sarah had coveted — was standing by the statue
of MoH^re, singing the Marseillaise. Every time she came to
" Marchons ! Marchons ! " the thousands of people present took
up the refrain, and again and again the words of the magnificent
old song were repeated.

Our party got separated here, and only five of us managed to
reach the Pont Neuf , which, crossing the Seine, led almost directly
to the Odeon. I was being partly carried, partly dragged by
my mother, and was so wildly excited that I felt no fatigue, in
spite of the considerable distance we had come.

An empty fiacre passed. The poet, Robert de Montesquiou,
then a boy of nineteen, but even at that time one of Sarah's firm
friends, hailed it. The cocher looked at him insolently.
" A I'Odeon ! " said Robert.
" It is five francs ! " replied the cocher.

The distance was not more than seven hundred yards, and
the fare ordinarily should have been only one franc. De Mon-
tesquiou was indignant and started a violent protest, but suddenly
the cocher caught sight of Sarah Bernhardt.

"It is ' our Sarah ' ? " he exclaimed. " Then I'm a dog !
Come, I will take you all, and for nothing ! "

I remember that Sarah climbed up on the box next to the old
coachman and gave him two resounding kisses, one on each

128 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

bronzed cheek. It appeared that the cocher was a regular sub-
scriber at the Odeon !

When we arrived at the theatre we hurried round to the stage-
door and trooped up into the wings. There we found Chilly,
Duquesnel and others talking on the stage in loud voices. When
they saw us, they set up a shout,

" Voild Bernhardt ! "

Chilly hurriedly explained that the Government had requested
that the theatre should be reserved that night for a patriotic
demonstration, at which some of it's members would be
present.

" The Emperor will be here also," he went on, " and has speci-
ally requested that you will open the proceedings by singing the
Marseillaise."

The doors opened at six o'clock. By 6.30 the theatre was
packed. The speeches were to begin an hour later. Sarah was
supposed to open the meeting, but when the time came she could
not be found anywhere.

Distracted officials searched the theatre high and low, shout-
ing for the missing actress. At last the meeting began without
her.

At eight o'clock Pierre Berton walked in through the stage-
entrance, followed by Sarah. Berton looked as black as a thunder-
cloud. Sarah's eyes were flashing, and red spots of temper were
on her cheeks. Her friends recognised the signals and the word
was passed around : " Something has gone wrong between Pierre
and Sarah . . . they have had a row."

Sarah went straight to Duquesnel, who began scolding her
for being late. But she cut him short.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 129

" I have acted for the last time with that man ! " she declared,
pointing to Berton.

Pierre looked on bitterly. (All this I had years later, of
course, from friends who saw the scene. I had been sent to bed
after my fatiguing afternoon.)

" What is the matter ? " asked Duquesnel, puzzled but not
despairing, for he knew Sarah and her fits of temper, although he
feared her obstinacy.

"He is disloyal ! He is a pro-German ! "

Pierre Berton darted forward with a loud protest.

" It is a lie ! "he shouted angrily. " She asked me to come on
the stage and sing the Marseillaise with her, and I said I would
not, because I disapprove of the war and of the crazy Emperor who
has declared it, as does every sensible man in all France. But I
am not disloyal ! I am not pro-German ! "

Sarah refused to listen. " You hear him ? " she cried. " He
admits it himself !, I will not appear with him again ! I will not
act with traitors ! "

At this remark flung at him with the hiss of a whip-lash by the
woman he loved and whose career he had made, Berton turned
away hiding his face in his arm. Then he walked out of the theatre
and was seen no more that night.

A famous journalist of the time, De Girardin, was making a
fiery speech, the gist of which was that within a fortnight our
troops must be in Berlin.

" A Berlin ! " howled the crowd, mad with frenzy. And then,

glorious in its full-toned strength, came the voice of Sarah, singing

the Marseillaise.

She was standing at the back of the dress circle, and had not

I

130 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

been noticed until she began to sing. She was dressed in a white
robe with a green girdle — a costume taken from one of her plays
—and standing there, as those inspiring notes issued from her
splendid throat, she personified the very spirit of France.

" Allans, enfants, de la patrie . . ."

The whole audience was on its feet singing, but ever above that
volume of sound rose the golden tones of Sarah Bernhardt. Hers
was not a singing voice, but now it rang out pure and clear as a
bell.

Just as a crystal glass, tapped with the finger-nail, will be
heard above the din of a great railway station, so was Sarah
Bernhardt s voice heard above the din and uproar of the Odeon
that night.

When she left the theatre, bands of students seized her and
carried her shoulder high along the Boulevard St. Michel, and
across the Pont de la Cite to the Place de Notre Dame, where still
another demonstration was in progress. Again she sang the
Marseillaise, and then " Mourir pour la Patrie," and other patriotic
songs.

She was exhausted when she reached home, and had caught a
bad cold, which kept her indoors for several days. During this
period, however, messengers arrived almost every hour bringing
her the news.

Paris, they said, was full of marching troops. The city was
still in the throes of excitement. The Opera was giving patriotic
performances every night, at which Marie Sass was singing the
Marseillaise from the balcony, so that all Paris could join in.

The Emperor had gone to the Front. The first clash had
occurred sixty miles south of Mayence.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 131

The theatres were still open, but there was talk of closing them.
The actors were organising a volunteer corps, and some had gone
already to the front, but there was a lack of uniforms.

MacMahon had sent word from Reichshoffen that all was well ;
the morale was fine ; they would be in Berlin in a few weeks !

The papers were talking about a rumoured big victory. The
Germans in Paris were not to be interned, but were to be kept to
do the work of the city.

Sarah Bernhardt shared the popular belief that victory was in
sight, that the war was all but over. All the newspapers, every
lounger on the boulevards said it — so why should she not believe
it to be true ?

She went on playing as usual at the Odeon, singing the
Marseillaise whenever requested to do so, but she adhered to her
resolution not to play with Pierre Berton ; and Duquesnel,
deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, had care-
fully arranged the bill so that they would not be called upon to
act in the same pieces.

The two seldom met and never spoke. Berton came rarely
to the theatre ; he was engaged in secret work, which some
declared was of a revolutionary nature, but it turned out later that
he had organised a corps of volunteers amongst the theatrical
people out of work, and was drilling them on the fortifications !
Sarah did not know of this at the time.

Victor Hugo, of course, had disappeared from Paris, where his
last visit had been made only under pain of instant arrest, if
seen ; for he had been banished from the capital for his revolu-
tionary writings. But among the papers of Hugo, which were
found at his death, was a letter from Pierre Berton, written in

132 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

August 1870, a month after the declaration of war, and smuggled
out of Paris, in which Berton appealed to Hugo to " return and
save France ! "

And France was in need of saving ! No longer were the boule-
vards filled with maddened patriots, excited by wine and shout-
ing of victory ; instead, these same patriots walked about with
a grave air, or joined squads of men under training ; and when
they spoke there was no bravado, but only great determination.

Wissembourg, with the defeat and death of General Douay,
had been the first event to startle the Parisian out of his self-satis-
faction and ignorance. Then, two days later, came the defeat
which definitely turned the tide against France- — the rout of
Marshal MacMahon, whose army was literally cut to pieces at
Freischwiller and Reichshoffen. A human torrent of four hundred
thousand men poured over the fields of France. The country was
invaded ; Paris was in danger.

Paris in danger ! The Parisians were not so much inclined
to laugh as they had been at first. It was ridiculous, of course —
it would take a miUion and a half men to besiege Paris success-
fully— but still, but still, there was Wissembourg, and the
undeniable evidence of Freischwiller and Reichshoffen !

Count de Pahkao, the new head of the Government, was a
friend of Sarah's ; that is, he had seen and spoken to her once or
twice, and would stop and bow when he met her. One day he
sent for her to his office, at the Chamber of Deputies.

" Mademoiselle," he said, taking her hand, " you can do a
great work for your country, if you will ! "

Sarah asked him to explain. The Count then said that the
Government had noticed how enthusiasm for the war was dying ;

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 133

and that something Uke panic was imminent in Paris, unless
optimism and hope could at once be restored to the hearts of the
people.

" That is your task ! " he finished.

The Count's plan was for Sarah to organise a committee of
artistes, authors and newspaper writers of her acquaintance, the
object of which was to instil into the people of Paris renewed belief
in the success of the campaign. More patriotic performances
were to be given ; patriotic posters were to be drawn up and
posted; and every member individually, whether by word of
mouth or by articles in the Press, was to affirm his or her belief
that victory was near.

Sarah undertook the task with enthusiasm. There is no
doubt now that her part in the defence of Paris was a glorious one.
There is no doubt, either, that wily old Count de Palikao, being
a general and a fine strategist himself, was perfectly well aware
even then that Paris was doomed.

Towards the latter part of August the efforts of the volunteer
committee fell more and more flat. The people seemed to
have sunk into an apathy out of which they could be aroused,
only at infrequent intervals, by rumours of victories — ^which
generally turned out to be false. When Sarah sang the Marseillaise
now she met with but a feeble response.

And then came Sedan, the overthrow of the Emperor, and
the Declaration of the Republic.

Magically, as it seemed, the whole city, which had been
shouting its plaudits of Napoleon III. but a few months ago, had
turned republican. Nobody would admit to having ever been a
royahst ! " Vive la RdpuUiqne " sounded on all hands.

134 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

When Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the Odeon that afternoon
of September 4 — there was no performance and no rehearsal, but
she could not stay away — it was to find a group of actors surround-
ing Pierre Berton, who, with a hammer and chisel, was carefully
chipping away the plaster " N " from the front of the royal
box.

Sarah stood and watched them for some time and then Berton,
descending from the ladder, saw her.

" Mademoiselle," he said, " I was hoping that I should see
you ! "

Sarah stood speechless. Taking her by the arm, Pierre led
her unresistingly aside.

" I leave with my regiment for the Front to-night ! " he said.

" Where is your uniform ? " demanded Sarah.

" You shall see it ! "

Running up to his dressing-room, Berton came down a few
minutes later garbed in one of the pitifully nondescript uniforms
of the National Guard — a grey kepi with a leather peak, a white-
and-blue coat and red trousers. On his arm were three galons,
showing his rank to be that of captain.

Sarah threw her arms about his neck and kissed him before the
entire company. Before nightfall all theatrical Paris knew that
Sarah Bernhardt and Pierre Berton were again lovers.

By now thousands of wounded were arriving in Paris, and
the temporary hospitals were totally inadequate. Great canvas
hospitals were erected on the fortifications, but these had to be
withdrawn into the city as the German advance continued.
There was an appalling lack of trained nurses, and almost as great
a lack of doctors and surgeons.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 135

The theatres were closed, and Sarah disappeared for two weeks.
When she re-appeared, it was in the uniform of a nurse. She had
earned her brevet from working in one of the temporary hospitals,
and even in that short time had learned not a little of the art
of caring for wounded.

Her next act was to ask permission from the Comte de
Keratry to re-open the Odeon as a hospital. This permission was
readily accorded, but no beds or supplies were forthcoming,
and it took all her energy and influence to procure these.

She was alone in Paris. Her son had been sent to Normandy,
and her mother and aunts had left at the same time, presumably
for Normandy but in reality for England and Holland, whither
they took the baby boy. While Sarah imagined her son safely
in a small village near Havre, he was really in London, and later
at Rotterdam.

During the siege of Paris her family left Rotterdam and went
into Germany, and at the very moment when Sarah was caring
for the wounded with untiring and devoted energy, her baby boy,
in charge of her mother and aunts, was living in the country of
the enemy at Wiesbaden. This she did not discover until after
the siege was raised. It certainly is the best possible confirmation
of the nationality of her mother's family.

136 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XIII

Sarah grew to know at least two members of the revolutionary
government extremely well. One was Jules Favre, who was given
the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and the other Rochefort, the
notorious editor of La Lanterne, who was taken out of prison by
the mob on the night the Empire was overthrown.

Two more opposite characters it would be hard to imagine.
Favre was a man in middle life^ — calm, rigidly upright, a thinker
and a statesman. Rochefort was little better than a literary apache,
and was the idol of the worst quarters of Paris. His speeches
were calculated to appeal to the baser instincts of the mob ; those
of Favre were the measured words of a lawyer. Rochefort, if
he had ever seized the reins of power, might have been another
Marat ; while Jules Favre, if he could not save France from
mutilation and humiliation at the hands of Germany, at least aided
her in retaining her honour and self-respect.

When Jules Favre, with Paris ringed by enemy steel and guns
capable of shelling the Op^ra point blank, and its population
all but starved, said to Bismarck : " Not one foot of soil ! Not one
stone from our fortresses ! " he was establishing for all time-to-
come the immortal spirit of RepubUcan France.

Think ! Paris could have been laid in ashes on the morrow, the
whole of France ravaged within a month, the last soldier put to
the sword, all without any possibility of resistance — and there

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 137

was found a Frenchman who could say defiantly to Bismarck :
" Not one inch of soil ! Not one stone from our fortresses ! "

Who shall dim the glory of a nation like that ?

If I seem to lay unwonted stress on the Franco-Prussian war —
now a matter, even for the French, of cold, unsentimental his-
tory— it is because it occurred at perhaps the most impression-
able moment of Sarah Bernhardt 's life, and has thus a direct
bearing on our story.

We have just gone through a war so big that, although the
Armistice was signed five years ago, it seems only yesterday.
We have had living evidence ourselves of the influences of war
upon the generation which fought it. We know how war can
alter the characters of men, for we have seen it react on our own
brothers and fathers and sisters. In France, in 1870, the women
did not go to the war as they did in those terrible years from 1914
to 1918, but they bore their share — possibly the heaviest share — of
suffering behind the scenes. In 1870 the army in the field was at
least on the move, engaged in active operations ; or, if it had been
compelled to capitulate, it was, at least, not hungry. But at that
time the women of Paris were very nearly starving. It is hard
to keep up courage, let alone enthusiasm, on an empty stomach ;
but this the women of Paris did !

As the Germans drew closer and closer to Paris and the outer
defences began to fall, the flood of wounded that poured into the
hastily-contrived hospitals increased, until it became a matter of
serious doubt whether there were sufficient beds to hold them.
Almost everything was lacking — bedding, medicines, bandages,
doctors, nurses and food.

Starting with five wounded soldiers, Sarah's hospital in the

138 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Odeon was soon taking care of more than a hundred. I remember
visiting it with my mother during the siege, and the frightfully
fetid odour that assailed one on entering the door still lingers in
my nostrils.

The wounded lay both in the theatre proper and on the stage.
The beds were placed in great semi-circles, leaving wide aisles
between, along which the doctors and nurses walked.

The nurses were nearly all actresses and friends of Sarah
Bernhardt whom she herself had trained. Their efficiency,
naturally, left much to be desired, but to the wounded they seemed
like ministering angels.

Among the patients were many German prisoners, and during
the siege these always had the best and choicest food obtainable,
so that when cured they could be released and sent back to their
army, to refute the impression of a starving Paris !

Sarah told a story of one man, a corporal, who taunted her on
his arrival with the words : " Oh ho ! I see the stories were
true ! You have had nothing to eat for so long that you are a
skeleton ! "

This uncomplimentary allusion to Sarah's slimness angered
her excessively, but she went on bandaging the man's leg, which
was broken. The next day the corporal was astonished at being
served with chicken soup for his dinner. On the following one
he was given boiled eggs and some young lamb.

" Chicken, eggs and lamb in a starving city ! " he exclaimed.
" Why, you have everything you want ! All these stories of a
starving Paris, then, are untrue ? "

He did not know that Sarah's own dinner for days had been
black bread and beans, and that she had not eaten meat for more

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 139

than a month ! Whatever dehcacies were brought to the hospital
were for her wounded.

Her face grew thinner, but took on an added beauty. She did
not spare her frail body, but worked from early morning until
late at night. More than once, when an exceptionally late convoy
of wounded arrived, she worked all night as well.

Her character became stronger and nobler ; forged in the fires
of suffering, the metal rang true. " La Bernhardt " became a
password of homage among the soldiers. From a c^.Te\ess gamine,
flattered by the adulation of the multitude, she became a serious
woman, striving only for one thing : the alleviation of suffer-
ing among the soldiers who were giving their all for their
country.

It might be said that the war came at an opportune moment in
Sarah Bernhardt's career. It demonstrated to her that, despite
the plaudits of Paris and the flattery of the multitude, she was
only an ineffectual morsel of the universe. It served to tame
her conceit, to teach her how insignificant individual success and
glory are compared to the welfare or suffering of a nation.

Her character became more subdued, her fits of temper less
violent and more rare. Her beauty had not suffered, however ;
rather had it been enhanced. Her eyes, always enigmatic,
had themselves gained something of the sentiment which ani-
mated her being. Dressed in the white of a military nurse, with
the red-and-green cross on either arm and on her hooded cap,
she was ethereally lovely. *

She used to go round begging overcoats from her rich acquaint-
ances. The Odeon was large, coal scarce and heating difficult.
It became a proverb among the men she knew : " Don't go down

140 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

to the Odeon with your overcoat on, or you will lose it : 'la Bern-
hardt ' will take it for her wounded ! "

Nevertheless, they were generous to her. The Ministry of
War, established in the Palace of the Tuileries, allowed her the
same rations as those allowed to the regular hospitals — and, in
fact, Sarah's personal appeals probably obtained for her something
extra.

At any rate, even in the darkest days of the siege, Sarah Bern-
hardt's wounded never lacked for anything essential. She set
every woman and child of her acquaintance to work making
bandages and folding lint. I myself worked eight hours a day
so doing. How I loved Sarah Bernhardt in those days ! She
seemed to me to be glory personified.

When the siege began there were, according to official statistics,
220,000 sheep, 40,000 oxen and 12,000 pigs within the city limits.
This, said the authorities, was ample to provide for the wants of
Paris for five or six months. And so it would have been — if they
had not forgotten that a live lamb or ox or pig needs to be fed as
well as the human beings who are subsequently to eat them !
They had brought this vast army of animals to Paris, but they had
forgotten to bring in sufficient quantities of forage to feed them.

All the public buildings were used for storing either food or
munitions. The Opera, which had not then been officially opened,
was organised as a gigantic warehouse by Charles Garnier, its
architect, and it was discovered that a river of fresh water flowed
underneath its cellars.

Sarah Bernhardt had had her hospital in full working order
for six weeks before she discovered that all the cellars under-
neath the Odeon were filled with boxes of cartridges and cases of

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 141

shells ! Since the Germans could have shelled the Odeon point
blank from the heights of Bellevue or Montretout, there was some
excuse for the urgent protest she made in person to Rochefort,
that these munitions should be removed and her wounded relieved
from the necessity of lying on a powder mine. Rochefort saw
that the necessary orders were given.

As winter dragged on, the siege became a wearisome thing,
but the courage of the Parisians could not be daunted. Cut off
from all communication with the outside world, and even from
their fugitive armies in the South ; starving and nearly at an
end of their resources, there was nevertheless no real thought of
surrender. The Germans said Paris could not hold out a month.
It had already held out two.

The hardest thing was to keep up the spirits of the people,
and in this Sarah Bernhardt again took a leading part. The
police had closed the theatres, and many of these, like the Od^on
and the Opera, were being used for purposes of national defence.
But it was felt that some amusements should be provided, so
Pasdeloup, the famous conductor, was asked to organise a com-
mittee of singers, musicians and stage-folk to see if some way could
not be found of getting over the difficulty. Eventually, on
October 23, Pasdeloup gave his first concert, and shortly after-
wards Lescouve re-opened the Com^die Fran9aise,

Sarah Bernhardt organised a scratch theatrical company
from among those of the actors and actresses of the Od^on who
were available, rehearsed several stock plays and gave them in the
open air, for the benefit of the troops of the National Guard,
who were encamped on the fortifications and in the parks.

In November Pierre Berton re-appeared — an older, bearded,

142 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

strange-looking Bert on. He had been in that part of the army
which was cut off from Paris, and had only reached the capital
by slipping past the German sentries at the peril of his life.

" But why did you not stay in the country, where you were
safe, and where your family is ? " he was asked. It was true —
his mistress and his children had long ago escaped to Tours.

" What ? — stay out of Paris, and she here ? " he demanded,
pointing to Sarah Bernhardt.

Their intimacy continued, but without the great passion of
other days. Sarah was tender to him, but made him see that her
days and nights belonged now to the wounded. Nevertheless,
Berton complained that others had taken his place in her heart.

There were four men, in particular, who excited his jealousy.
These were the Count of Keratry, under-secretary for food sup-
plies ; Paul de Remusat, one of the prevailing moderate elements
in the new Government and a great friend of Thiers ; Rochefort,
who certainly had for Sarah a strange and somewhat uncanny
attraction, in view of his violence and his dissolute character
(Sarah says of him : "It was Rochefort who caused the downfall
of the Empire ") ; and finally Captain O'Connor, a cavalryman,
who was a much more serious competitor for Sarah's affections
than the other three. O'Connor will figure in these memoirs
later on.

There is considerable doubt as to whether Count de Keratry
was ever a lover of Sarah Bernhardt 's. He had known her since
she was a child at Grandchamps, when he used to visit the Convent
to spend an hour with a niece, who was a pupil there. Later, he had
been introduced to her family, and by the time he received his
commission as a lieutenant of cavalry and was sent to command

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 143

a unit in the campaign of Mexico, had come to be a rather frequent
visitor in the house in the rue Michodiere. From then on Sarah
Bernhardt did not see him until he returned, just before the
Franco- Prussion war, and was given an appointment on the
Staff. After the Revolution he was made a prefect, with special
charge over the victualling of the city.

It was he who saw that Sarah's hospital was so well supplied
with food' — well supplied, that is, in comparison with other hos-
pitals of a similarly independent character. During the siege
Sarah saw him frequently, and he went often to the Od6on.

He was greatly enamoured of the young actress, but they were
both too busy to give much time to each other, and certainly
their humane duties precluded any prolonged love-making. But
Berton saw in the Count de Keratry's frequent visits to Sarah an
intrigue that threatened to oust him from his privileged place
at her side, and he made many heated remonstrances to that
effect.

Paul de Remusat, an author, playwright and educationalist,
and withal a most supremely modest and unassuming man, was
one of the real forces behind the revolution, but he was not one of
the popular figures in it. He seldom spoke in public.

Sarah had been introduced to him, some months prior to the
war, by the younger Dumas. She found inordinate pleasure in
reading his writings, which were of an inspiring beauty. She
would go to his modest apartment in the rue de Seine and sit on
the floor at his feet, one arm over his knees, as he read to her his
latest works.

It was to Paul de Remusat that Thiers, Favre, Arago, Cremieux,
Gambetta, Jules Simon, Ferry, Picard, Pages and the rest of the

144 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

revolutionary committee came in the afternoon with their plan
of action (that night the Empire fell). It was de Remusat who
revised this plan, and advised them of the pitfalls that lay-
ahead.

He could have had anything in the gift of the new Govern-
ment. If the times had not decreed that the President must be
a military man^ — the honour eventually went to the Governor of
Paris, General Trochu — there is no doubt in my mind that Paul
de Remusat would have been offered the highest post possible
in the new order of things. The fact that he had a " de " as prefix
to his name was another drawback, for it only needed a " de "
to convince some people of one's royalist leanings.

Eventually, it was decided to make him Minister of Fine
Arts, and a committee was sent to him with this idea in view.
That evening the president of this committee, M, Th^ophile
Besson, sent for Sarah and said to her, despairingly : " It is no
use, we cannot move him. You are the only person on earth,
mademoiselle, who can make him change his mind ! " Sarah
consented to do her best, and saw de Remusat the next day.
He asked to be allowed twenty-four hours to think the matter
over, and he then wrote to Sarah to this effect.

" Ch^re, ch^re amie : Allow me to remain, my charming
little friend, in the shadow, where I can see so much clearer than
I would if smothered in honours ! "

In another letter a few days afterwards he said :

" You know well that you have instilled into me an ideal of

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 145

beauty too partial to be of service to the world, which makes me
prefer to avoid worldly strife and ambitions."

Throughout her career Sarah Bernhardt seemed to have
possessed this God-given faculty of elevating the ideals and
ennobling the ambitions of men. The influence she exerted on
her century in matters of art was incalculable. To painters she
would say : "If you love me, then paint a masterpiece and
dedicate it to me ! " To poets she would say : " If it is true that
you love me, you will write a poem about me that will live when
we both are dead ! " And true it is that numbers of famous
verses to anonymous beauty had their inception in the ideal
which Sarah Bernhardt had succeeded in creating.

Alexandre Dumas fits once told me : " She drives me mad
when I am with her. She is all temperament and no heart ; but
when she is gone, how I work ! How I can work ! "

Georges Clairin threw down his tools in his studio one day,
interrupting work on a great mural painting he was doing for Sarah
Bernhardt's house, and went in search of Sarah. When he had
found her, he remained half an hour in silent contemplation of
her face. Finally, he jammed his round black velvet artist's cap
on his head, turned on his heel without a word and, returning to
his studio, worked savagely on his painting until it was
finished.

" Before," he told me, " it used to be absinthe ; now it is
Sarah ! "

Where other actresses prided themselves on their influence

in politics- — there was a time when affairs of state were habitually

settled in the salons of the reigning beauties — Sarah, consciously

K

146 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

or unconsciously, exerted her influence on men of letters and
art.

She would not look at a man unless he was doing something
useful with his life. She despised idlers, and was ever at work
herself. Not that she was of severe or strictly moral character.
Far from it. But she used her beauty and her undisputed hold
on men in the finest way possible : namely by inspiring and
creating idealism in the minds of the clever men who loved her.
That may have been the secret of her hold on men.

It became an axiom in the theatrical world : "If you want an
introduction to So-and-so (naming a prominent author, playwright^
or artist), go and ask Sarah Bernhardt."

Her influence on Pierre Berton was somewhat of a different
sort, but this was his and not her fault. Berton had an excessively
jealous temperament, as I found out for myself later on.

Victor Hugo had returned in triumph to Paris from his secret
place of exile, and Pierre Berton was asked to read his poem " Les
Chatiments," the daring and somewhat terrible masterpiece that
is credited with having been chiefly responsible for the spread of
anti-imperialist feeling in France. It was a forbidden work under
the Empire and had previously only been read in secret in the
clubs.

Berton read the poem in the Theatre Lyrique, before a great
and enthusiastic crowd. Sarah refused to attend. She still
felt some bitterness against Victor Hugo, for, though she now
called herself a Republican — it was dangerous to term oneself
anything else — she had preserved cherished memories of the
Emperor, the Empress, and the Court in which her acting had
once produced a sensation.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 147

She had never forgotten that simple act of generous courtesy,
when the Emperor Napoleon had descended from his throne to
kiss her on the cheek, in recognition both of her beauty and her
art. He might be a prisoner in Germany and they might call
him an imbecile, but she remembered him as a very gentle friend.
And the Empress- — who had escaped from Paris in the carriage
of an American dentist' — it was she who had commanded the
performance at the Tuileries, and it was she who had personally
sent a note of thanks to Sarah at the theatre on the following
day.

Sarah's memories of Royalty were inspiring. And she had
hardly become accustomed to Republicanism when the existing
Government was swept away with the Capitulation of Paris,
and the horrors of the Commune introduced.

Sarah saw Paris set on fire by the maniacs who said they were
" saving the nation " ; saw many of her friends in political circles
shot dead without trial ; feared, like many others, that the Terror
was come again. And, to add to her trouble, a man whom she
had been at some pains to make an enemy was appointed chief
of police !

This man was Raoul Rigault, a youngster of thirty. He
had been one of that student band who established Sarah's fame,
and had presumed on this fact to send her loving verses, and
on one occasion a play in bad verse, which she promptly returned
through Berton as being " unfit for her to handle, let alone read."
Rigault was furious and swore vengeance.

When the Commune came, Rigault was appointed Prefect of
Police, and he visited Sarah at her flat, situated, after another
move on her part, in the Boulevard Malesherbes.

148 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" It depends upon you, mademoiselle," he said, " whether
there is war or peace between us."

Sarah, angered beyond measure at this insult, sprang up and
struck him on the face with the palm of her hand. Then she
ordered him to be shown the door.

When Berton came later in the day, he wanted to seek out
Rigault at once and kill him. " The rat ! " he kept declaring,
" the rat ! "

He did, in fact, visit the Prefecture with the idea of meeting
Rigault and " calling him out," but could not find him. Before
the Communist could wreak his threatened vengeance on Sarah,
the Commune was over and he was executed.

Immediately after the signature of peace, Sarah made a long
and exceedingly hazardous voyage to Hamburg, via Holland,
where she met her family and saw her baby boy again . She furiously
abused her mother and her aunt for daring to take her son to
Germany during that country's war on France, and after their
return to Paris she refused for some time to have anything to do
with her Aunt Rosine, whom she regarded as responsible for the
outrage. She brought her son back with her.

Among her acquaintances before the war had been a man named
James O'Connor, a Frenchman of Irish descent. She had had
little to do with him at this epoch, and had known him only
as a frequenter of several literary salons which she had been in
the habit of attending.

Just before the siege of Paris, Captain O'Connor^ — he had been
given a commission in the cavalry^ — was brought to her hospital
at the Odeon, suffering from a bullet wound in the hip. Though
his recovery was rapid his convalescence was long.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 149

Sarah tended him with her own hands, and their friendship
ripened into a warm intimacy. With Berton more and more
involved in politics, and passing nearly all his evenings at meetings
in the home of Victor Hugo, Sarah saw a lot of the dashing Cap-
tain O'Connor, and it was he who, when the Communist rebellion
broke out, arranged her escape from Paris with her son, and
installed her in a cottage between St. Germain and Versailles.

Almost every day they took long gallops together and once,
when riding through the Park of Versailles, they were shot at by
a crazy communist who had hidden himself behind a tree. The
bullet missed its mark and, turning in the saddle. Captain O'Connor
mortally wounded the man. Then he made as if to ride coolly on.

" But you are not going to leave him like that ? " asked
Sarah, sick at heart, pointing to the man who lay dying on the
grass.

" Why not," asked O'Connor, coldly. " He would have
worried himself precious Httle about you and me if he had suc-
ceeded in killing us. Every day friends in my regiment are killed in
this way by some of these madmen in ambush."

Sarah slipped off her horse and supported the man's head in
her arms, where a few seconds later he expired. Then, remount-
ing with a stony face, she gave her hand to O'Connor.

" What's the matter ? " he asked in cynical amazement.

" I will not ride any further with an assassin ! " she said, and
then galloped away.

This unjust accusation deeply mortified O'Connor, especially
as Sarah refused to see him the next day when he rode over to
offer renewed explanations and to exact an apology.

150 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XIV

The Paris papers were full of it ; the literary and theatrical world
talked of nothing else : Victor Hugo was to be played again !

It was Ruy Bias, naturally, that had been chosen for the open-
ing of the Hugo season, and it was at the Odeon that the play
was to be given. Duquesnel and Chilly, after many long con-
ferences, had come to the conclusion that the decision as to who
was to be the chief interpreter of the piece should be left to the
illustrious dramatist himself. Sarah Bernhardt saw Chilly.

" I must play Ruy Bias ! " she said to him.

" But, mademoiselle, there are others whose claim is greater
than yours," said the little manager. " Monsieur Hugo cannot
and will not be influenced in his choice ! I can tell you nothing
until I have seen him."

Sarah Bernhardt went to Pierre Bert on.

" You are a friend of Victor Hugo's," she said. " Go to
him and persuade him that I must play Ruy Bias ! "

She told me years afterwards : "I felt that it was to be the
supreme effort of my life. Something within me told me that,
if only I could play this masterpiece, both fame and fortune would
come at once. I was so sure of this that I determined nothing
should stand in my way — and no other artiste."

Berton returned jubilant from his interview with Victor Hugo.

" The Master says you are toute indiqude ! " he told the

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 151

enchanted actress ; "he has had you in mind from the
beginning."

Rehearsals lasted a month, and Victor Hugo was at each one
of them, an indomitable figure of middle height, his grey wiry hair
tumbling over his ears and collar. Generally he sat in the front
row of the orchestra, but on occasions a chair was placed for him
in the wings, and from there he would jump up excitedly whenever
he saw something which disagreed with his theories as to how the
play should be produced, and would spend valuable minutes trying
to demonstrate the right way in which a passage should be
rendered.

One evening, after rehearsals were over, he had a new idea
concerning the part of Ruy Bias. Without stopping to think,
he dispatched this hasty message to Sarah Bernhardt : " Come
at once and we will talk it over."

" What ! Does he think I am his valet ? " angrily exclaimed
Sarah, and wrote as much to him. In an hour or so she received
the whimsical reply: " No, mademoiselle, it is I who am your
valet ! — Victor Hugo."

This, of course, appeased Sarah, and when they met the
next day they were on cordial terms enough. Two days later
Victor Hugo brought Sarah a huge bunch of roses, which he
presented to " My Queen of Spain " (Sarah's part in Ruy Bias was
that of the Queen).

" I know where those roses came from ! " declared Sarah,
accepting them suspiciously.

" From my garden, mademoiselle ! " said Victor Hugo, with
a bow.

" No, they came from the garden of Paul Meurice ! It is

152 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

impossible that there should be another rose-bush like that in all
France ! "

Hugo was extremely disconcerted, the more so as his friend
Meurice, who was standing by, burst into a hurricane of laughter.

" I told you she would know them ! I told you ! " he roared.

Hugo quickly recovered his habitual wit.

" They are, mademoiselle, the finest roses in all Europe ! " he
assured Sarah solemnly. " I offered to buy them, and Paul
would not sell ; then I tried to steal them, and he caught me.
So I made him give them to me, since with these roses existing it
was manifestly impossible for me to give you any others."

Sarah accepted the gift, which was one of a series she received
from the great author. Then Hugo said :

" You know, mademoiselle, if we go by the standards of
your ancestors, the Dutch, we are not really friends ! "

" "Why not ? " asked Sarah, innocently.

" Well, the Dutch have a saying that no friendship is
cemented till the two friends in turn break bread together under
their own roofs."

" Then come to dinner with me to-night — and you, too,
Paul ? " she said, turning to Meurice.

" But I cannot do that — I have an important engagement I "
said Victor Hugo.

Meurice, his most intimate friend, who knew all his engage-
ments, turned to him in astonishment, and Sarah, seeing his
astonishment, naturaEy thought that Hugo was merely making
an excuse so that he would not have to dine with her. She turned
haughtily away. But Hugo, running after her, laid his hand on
her arm in supplication.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 153

" Do not be angry, ma petite Reine," he said, " my engagement
is with you ! "

" With me ! "

" Yes, I have told the cook to prepare a great dinner to-night,
and you are my guest ! "

Sarah regarded him suspiciously. Stories of his libertinage
had been current for years.

" Whom else have you invited ? " she demanded.

" Oh," answered Hugo, vaguely waving his hand, " er —
lots of people^ — Duquesnel, Meurice here, and' — and others."

Sarah caught the amazed expression on Meurice 's face and,
excusing herself, sought out Duquesnel.

" Has Victor Hugo invited you to a grand dinner at his
house to-night ? " she asked.

" No— why ? "

Sarah did not answer, but returned to Hugo and held out
her hand, smiling.

" Very well, then, it is understood — I shall come at eight
o'clock."

Hugo was overjoyed and overwhelmed her with thanks. He
was completely taken aback, however, when Sarah Bernhardt
arrived at the time mentioned- — with four friends !

The table had been laid for two, as Sarah had expected. But
Hugo treated the matter as a great joke, entertained them
dehghtfuUy until midnight with stories of his travels, and went
about for days afterwards telling his friends what a " smart
woman that Bernhardt was ! "

There was never anything but ordinary friendship, and much
mutual admiration, between Sarah Bernhardt and Victor Hugo,

154 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

despite all the rumours that were current then and have been
bruited around since. The principal reason for this was, of course,
that Sarah was a young woman, while Hugo was nearing the
end of his long and active career.

" Victor Hugo ? " she answered me once. " A wonderful
vieillard (old man)."

Ruy Bias was produced at the Od^on on January 26, 1872,
before the most brilliant audience the theatre had ever seen.
Every seat had been taken days in advance, and hundreds
crowded into the space behind the back rows and stood up
throughout the entire performance.

Sarah Bernhardt triumphed. She often told me that never
again in her long career did she act so well as she did that night.
And Paris agreed with her. She was a literal sensation.

When the play was over, she was forced to respond to more
than twenty curtain-calls. She tried to make a little speech of
thanks, but failed, broke down and ran off the stage sobbing, to
the huge delight and thunderous applause of the audience.

Blinded by tears, she was making her way to her dressing-
room when she felt two arms placed about her from behind and
a gentle voice whisper in her ear :

" What, my queen ! Are you going without a word to me ? "

The grave reproach made her lift her head and turn. It was
Victor Hugo. His eyes, too, were wet.

" Sarah," he said gravely, " I have but one word to say to
you, and I say it with all niy soul : merci ! "

Georges Clairin, who was present, sketched the two as they
stood there in each other's arms, mingling their tears of happiness.

The sketch was published some days later, under the title of

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Letter of Congratulation from V'ictorien Sardou.

P- 154-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 155

" The Goddess and the Genius." From that day dated the
" divinity " of Sarah Bernhardt. Her art had become supreme,
a thing to amaze and astound the world.

Sarah Bernhardt's collaboration with Victor Hugo became
frequent from that time forward.

In 1877 Hugo saw her in Hernani and wrote to her :

" Madame,

" You have been great and charming ; you have
touched my heart— mine, the old soldier's — and, at a certain
moment, while the enchanted and overwhelmed public applauded
you, I wept. This tear, which you caused to fall, is yours, and
I throw myself at your feet !

" Victor Hugo."

Accompanying the note was the " tear " — a magnificent,
pear-shaped diamond, suspended from a gold bracelet.

Years later, when Sarah was visiting Alfred Sassoon in London,
she lost the bracelet, and Sassoon, tremendously worried, begged
to be permitted to replace it.

Sarah sadly shook her head.

" Nothing," she said, " can ever replace for me the tear of
Victor Hugo ! "

Every critic in Paris, with the sole exception of Francisque
Sarcey the irrepressible, praised with lavish phrases her per-
formance as the Queen in Ruy Bias. But Sarcey was brutal.

" She is a scarecrow with a voice," he wrote. " Certainly,
the public is entitled to be informed of the reasons MM. Duquesnel,

156 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Chilly and Hugo had for giving her the role in which she appears.
She is not yet mature, does not move naturally, and seems to
rely exclusively on her talent for recital."

Sarah went into violent hysterics when she read the article.
She could not imagine why Sarcey was so venomous. Pierre
Berton knew Sarcey intimately, of course, and tried to intercede
for her. He met a rebuff.

" Your protegee has blinded you with her blue eyes," Sarcey
said. " She is not a great success, and she never will be
one ! "

The critic continued his devastating articles, seeming to find
pleasure in tearing down the reputation of the young actress.
He had an undisputedly great following, and the management of
the Odeon itself commenced to look askance at this unwelcome
publicity.

Sarah was particularly concerned over the effect Sarcey's
diatribes would have with the management of the Comedie
Fran^aise, for (secretly) she longed to be taken back into the
fold of the theatre which then, as now, was the principal play-
house of France.

Sarcey's articles culminated in a vitriolic attack on Sarah's
interpretation of another role (I think it was that of Mademoiselle
Aisee). Sarah read the attack during an entr'acte on the third
night, and became so ill with anger that a doctor had to be sent
for. She finished her role that night, but her acting was so bad
that even critics favourable to her commented upon it.

Girardin, the friend of Victor Hugo and the most famous
journalist of his time, came to her on the following day, as she

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 157

lay in bed exhausted from a sleepless night, and said to her
without preamble :

" Of course, you realise why Sarcey is attacking you ? "

Sarah looked at him in red-eyed surprise.

" No— why should I know ? " she replied. " I have never
met him ! "

" Think again ! " urged Girardin. " He says you and he are
old acquaintances ! "

Sarah thought, and after a moment she replied : " He is
mistaken ; I have never met him."

" He tells his friends that he met you once at the home of

Madame de S ," responded Girardin, " and that you were

rude to him there "

Sarah sat up in bed with a bound. " That— that creature—
that was Sarcey ? " she cried. " Why— he was ignoble ! He
was criticising Camille Blanchet, one of my dearest friends,
saying that he was a cow on the stage, and I — • — "

" What did you say ? " prompted Girardin.

" I— I forget ; but I think I said that I would rather be a
cow on the stage than a pig in a drawing-room ! . . . But— I
had no idea that he was Sarcey ! "

" Well," said Girardin conclusively, " that was he ! "

Sarah was pale with dismay. " What shall I do ?" she asked.

" There are only two things you can do," answered Girardin.
" Either you can ignore him, and let him continue his attacks,
in which case you can say good-bye to your chances of re-entering
the Comedie— at least for the present ; or you can— make friends
with the man."

" But how — make friends ? "

158 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" I have heard that he is susceptible to a pretty woman ! "
said Girardin, drily, " and if you meet him, and explain that you

did not know that it was he, that day at Madame de S 's,

perhaps "

Sarah understood.

On the following Sunday Pierre Berton (it was he who told me
the story, many years later) saw Sarcey sitting in a stage-box,
dressed in a dandified full-dress and wearing all his honours. His
expression was so triumphant, as Sarah came on the stage, that
Berton " smelt a rat " and decided to watch carefully.

For some months Sarah's attitude to him had been one of
increasing coldness — coldness that was the more inexplicable,
since he had been her friend and protector from the time she
entered the theatre. He believed now that he held the key to
the mystery.

Sure enough, when the curtain fell for the evening, Sarah
accosted Pierre in the wings, and said to him :

" Ecoutes ! I don't feel well to-night ; I will go home alone
with Blanche." Blanche was her maid.

His protests only made her refusal to allow him to escort her
the more emphatic and irritable.

" I tell you I am ill ! I must go straight home to bed ! "
she asserted.

Hurrying through his dressing, Pierre ran to the stage entrance,
where he hid in the door-keeper's box and watched. He had
waited some time when word was brought to him that Sarah had
left — by the front door. Hurrying round to the front, Pierre
was just in time to see her greet Sarcey, who was waiting there,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 159

with an affectionate kiss, and then mount into the same fiacre
with him.

They drove away together, and from that day on Sarcey's
pen ceased to be dipped in vitriol and became impregnated with
sugar, in so far as Sarah Bernhardt was concerned. Things
continued thus until the inevitable break came, when Sarcey
resumed his role of merciless critic. But by that time Sarah did
not care. She was back at the Comedie Frangaise, and not aU
the Sarceys in the world could have detracted from her glory
nor torn the halo from her brow.

When Sarah quarrelled with Sarcey, she was gi-eater than he.

Afterwards she attempted from time to time to renew her
intimacy with Pierre Berton, but Berton, though remaining
her friend and admirer, scrupulously kept on that footing and
declined to return to his old status of doting lover and slave.

It was his last love affair until, the mother of his five children
dying, he met and married me.

i6o Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XV

Sarah communicated to Francisque Sarcey her desire to return
to the Comedie Fran9aise. Not that she was unhappy at the
Od^on ! On the contrary, she had been gloriously happy there
and owed everything to the staff of that theatre. It was simply
that in those days, unless one had become the great star of the
Comedie Frangaise, one was not the great star of France. It was
the criterion by which a dramatic career succeeded or failed —
a sort of Royal Academy of the stage. And Sarah's engagement
at the Comedie as a star would be a double triumph, since it would
mean that those who disliked her and were embittered against
her by personal quarrels had been forced to engage her because her
genius would not let them do otherwise.

It was not an unheard-of thing for an actress to be taken from
another theatre to the Comedie and starred ; but it was rare.
Generally, the stars of the Comedie were societaireS' — actresses who
had entered the institution as apprentices, and had remained
there throughout their careers. It is so even now. For an
actress to be invited from another theatre meant a signal honour
and a public acknowledgment that she was pre-eminent in her

art.

It is likely that Sarcey did not have to use much persuasion
with the directors of the Comedie. His influence was unlimited

Sarah a constant victim to writ-servers.
Exhibited at the Exposition des Incoherents,

1880

Sarah and Sarcey.
Bv Caran d'Ache, 1880.

The ^Manifold Vocations of Sarah.

By Moloch, in La Silhouette,

1880.

Sarah and Damala in Les

Meres Ennemies, by Grimm,

1882.

Sarah Bernhardt in Caricature.

p. 160,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her i6i

there, and the mere fact that the great Sarcey had changed
his opinion of Sarah' — even though a majority of Paris suspected
the cause — was enough to stamp her with the precious hall-mark
of genius.

But Sarah had enemies enough in the House of Moli^re.
Maubant the tragedian, for one, had sworn that she should enter
the theatre only over his dead body ! Madame Nathalie was
still there, together with her group of powerful friends. She
had not forgotten the time that Sarah had slapped her face,
nor would she ever forget it. The mere rumour that Sarah was
to be invited back to the Com^die would send this group into
transports of rage.

After Le Passant, Sarah's salary at the Odeon had been in-
creased to four hundred francs a month, and following her triumph
in Ruy Bias she was given a further increase of two hundred
francs, making six hundred in all. This salary, about six pounds
a week, was considered excellent in those dayS' — and it was not
bad, even considering the somewhat depreciated buying-power
of money in Paris due to the war and the Commune.

But it was not nearly sufficient for Sarah, who lived in lavish
style in her new apartment in the Boulevard Malesherbes. There
she had a suite of nine large rooms, all of them exquisitely fur-
nished, and she maintained a staff of five servants. She had two
coaches^ — one for ordinary driving to and from the theatre, and
the other for special occasions, such as Sunday mornings in
the Champs Elys^es and the Bois, when all fashionable Paris
turned out in their smartest equipages to stare and be stared
at.

She was constantly buying things and as constantly signing

L

1 62 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

I.O.U.'s and traites (a species of acknowledgment of debt which
authorises its collection by a bank) . She never knew to a certainty
how much money she owed, and was constantly surrounded by
a horde of creditors eager to collect.

Among these creditors was a Jew, one Fran9ois Cohen, a
dealer in furniture and one of the most astute business men in
Paris. He was not only a good business man ; he was an extra-
ordinary judge of dramatic talent, and in fact edited a column
of dramatic comment for Le Monde et La Ville, a monthly
sheet distinguished for its accurate information. He did this,
of course, merely as a recreation.

Sarah's attention was first attracted to him by the number
of Le Monde et La Ville issued after her first performance in
Francois Coppee's Le Passant — the charity performance, I mean,
before the play became a definite part of the Odeon repertoire.
In his column Cohen had written :

" It is worth while to report the discovery, on Sunday night, of
a new celestial body in the firmament of drama. We have found
a poet, you will say ; yes, but that is the least of it. Coppee
is a master^ — a master in swaddling clothes — but even he, with his
intricate verse, of which one understands only the beauty without
comprehending the sense, would have been lost but for the out-
standing magnificence of the most promising young actress on
the stage in Paris. I am speaking of MUe. Bernhardt.

" Who is she ? I have asked, and nobody seems to know.
There are stories of royal favour, of noble blood, of powerful
protection ; let us trust that they are untrue, for Mile. Bernhardt
must have the incentive to work which only the necessity to live

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 163

can give her. But that she is something new in the heavens is,
as I have said, undoubted.

" The question only remains : Will she be a comet, like so
many others, flashing for but a brief instant in our bewildered
and astonished consciousness, or will she develop into a new
astronomical marvel, a brilHant seventh of the Odeon Constella-
tion, destined to shine with increasing brilliance, to dazzle us
with her art and to warm us with her voice, until she becomes
a fixed sun in the celestial firmament of France ?

" No one who saw her performance last night can doubt that
the genius is there ; it remains but to know whether she also
possesses the great gift of ambition and the necessary deter-
mination to work which alone can make her success a per-
manent thing. It is, perhaps, fortunate that she is not too
beautiful. ..."

It was the most keenly analytical criticism that had appeared
— I have quoted only a small part of the article — and, despite
Sarah's distaste for the last sentence, she realised that the author
of the commentary knew what he was talking about. This was
shown by his skilful delineation of the play. She carried the
paper to Berton and asked :

" Who is ' F. C who signs this article ? "

" I don't know," said Berton, " and nobody else does either.
It seems to be a sort of secret. But he is clever."

Sarah sent a note to the paper asking the editor to com-
municate with " F. C." and ask him if he would call upon Sarah
Bernhardt, who wished to thank him. She named a day and
a time.

164 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

At the appointed hour a call-boy came to her dressing-room
with a card, on which was printed : " Frangois Cohen."

Ah ! So this was " F, C." Sarah's eyes brightened in anticipa-
tion. She knew of a question that she meant to ask him.

The door opened and a little, round-shouldered man, with a
hooked nose and beady, sparkling eyes came in. He was dressed
in a suit of clothes two sizes too big for him ; one of his shoes was
unlaced and he kept his hat on.

Without preamble he advanced into the room with a short,
mincing gait, trotted over to where Sarah sat regarding him with
astonishment and suspicion, seized her hand, which he pecked
at with his lips, and then thrust a large book on the table in front
of her and began to turn over the pages.

" I understand that you are very busy, mademoiselle,"
he said, with a strong accent, " and so I have brought the catalogue
that is likely to interest you, and I think we can agree very quickly.
The prices are marked, but perhaps "

Finally Sarah Bernhardt found her voice.

" Who," she demanded, struggling with mingled surprise
and indignation, " are you ? "

The little Jew looked up, astonished.

" Why," he answered, " I am Fran9ois Cohen ! Did not they
give you my card ? I was told to come up^ "

" B — but, I thought that you had come from a paper^ — ■ — "

Cohen's little eyes sparkled. " I am Fran9ois Cohen, and I
sell very fine furniture," he said.

" I do not want to buy furniture ! " exclaimed Sarah testily.
" I wanted to see a man who signs himself ' F. C in L^ Monde et
La Ville, and I thought, when I saw your card "

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 165

" You are sure you do not want to buy any furniture ? "

" Of course I am sure ! "

" Then, mademoiselle, we may talk of the other matter.
I— I am also ' F. C "

Sarah regarded him incredulously.

" You are ' F. C who writes the theatrical article in Le
Monde et La Ville P " she demanded, with frank disbelief. " I don't
believe it ! You are trying to lie to me, so that I will buy
your furniture."

" I will prove it to you, if you like."

" How ? "

" Well, you know what I said in my article- — that you would
one day be a great star if only you worked hard and had
ambition ? "

" Yes."

" Have you ambition ? " he asked her.

" Yes," returned the actress, wonderingly. " I have —
ambition."

" Will you give me your promise to study and work hard ? "
the extraordinary little man then asked her.

" I mean to do that — yes ! " replied Sarah.

" Then I will prove my faith in you by making this agreement :
If you will buy from me the furniture that you need in furnishing
your new flat " (her old one had been burned out a few nights
before), " I will give you credit for six years ! "

Sarah could not believe her ears.

" Credit for six years ! " she cried. " But that is a long
time ! "

" Six years ! " repeated the Jew impassively.

i66 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" But why six ? Why not ten^ — or two ? "

" Because I believe that you will be famous within six years
and will be well able to pay me," he answered.

The deal was struck. Six years later Sarah Bernhardt's name
was the most celebrated in all Paris, and Cohen came to collect
his bill- — eleven thousand francs, including interest. It took
all Sarah's spare cash, and all she could borrow on her salary,
but she paid him. It was the only debt I ever knew her to be
scrupulous about.

Sarah was in bed one morning when Madame Guerard, who
had become a sort of secretary to her, entered the bedroom with
a letter in her hand and a mysterious look on her face. Closing
the door behind her, she went silently to the bed, and stood looking
at Sarah.

Then she handed her the letter. It was in a large, square
envelope, and on the back of it was printed " Comedie
Fran^aise."

Sarah uttered a cry of exultation. It was her summons !
She felt morally certain of it before the envelope was opened.

" Open it, Madame Guerard ! " she cried, " and tell me what
it says ! "

The old lady carefully broke the seal, withdrew the letter,
adjusted her spectacles and commenced to read :

" Monsieur Perrin, administrator of the Comedie Fran9aise,
requests from Mile. Sarah Bernhardt the honour of an appoint-
ment as soon as possible."

Sarah jumped out of bed, seized the letter, and did a dance of

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 167

triumph on the floor. " Tell him" she said breathlessly, " that
I will go to see him to-day, at once' — — "

" It is Monday, and the offices are closed," reminded Madame
Guerard.

" That is so. I had forgotten. Well, tell him I will go to see
him to-morrow afternoon."

The next day she saw Perrin, who took her hands in his and
said to her earnestly : " My child, I know that you are very much
attached to the Odeon, but your future belongs to France — and
this is the National Theatre of France."

" When Perrin said that," Sarah related to me long afterwards,
" I felt that my great moment had come. I was vindicated !
My art had triumphed ! I had compelled the Comedie Frangaise,
my enemies, to admit that I was the greatest artiste in
Paris ! "

She dictated harsh terms to Perrin, who promised to consider
them. In two days came his reply : the administration had met
and considered her case, and had instructed him to say that they
would pay her an annual traitement of 12,000 francs.

With this letter in her hand she sought Duquesnel. That
admirable man had long suspected that Sarah was eager to
return to the Comedie.

But he only looked at her reproachfully and said : " Our little
Sarah wishes to leave us ? After all we have done for her ?
She does not love us any more ! "

Sarah burst into a flood of tears, and flung herself into the
director's arms.

" It is not true ! I do not want to leave you ! I love you
all ! I would like to stay. But you see "

i68 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

She could not explain that she felt her glory incomplete as
long as she remained only the star of the Odeon.

" Well ? " prompted Duquesnel. " Let me say it for you —
it is the money ! "

Sarah gave a sigh of relief. She had been afraid he would
divine her real reason. And, anyway, the money played no small
part in her determination to return to the Comedie.

" Yes," she admitted, " of course, it is the money. Perrin
offers me twelve thousand francs a year. Give me fifteen thousand
and I will remain here."

The largest salary hitherto paid by the Odeon to an artist
was the 10,000 francs a year which had been earned by Mounet-
Sulley before he, too, was taken by the Comedie Fran9aise.
Sarah and Duquesnel both knew that it was impossible that she
should be given fifteen.

" I will talk to Chilly," said he at last, " but I do not think he
will agree."

The next day Chilly sent for her. His manner was abrupt,
rude. But Sarah understood the man by this time. She knew
that his brusque manner was only his way of concealing
emotion.

" So," he said, " you want to leave us — idiot ! "

" I do not want to leave," answered Sarah, " but I am offered
more money ! "

" Your place is here ! There is not a theatre in Paris which
can offer you more than the Odeon, except the Comedie, and
of course you will never' — ■ — "

Sarah tendered him the envelope she had received from

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 169

Perrin, and Chilly started as he saw the inscription on the
back.

" Ah ! " he exclaimed.

Sarah waited.

" What do they offer ? "

" Twelve thousand."

" I will give you twelve — — "

" No, you must give me fifteen."

Chilly rose from his chair, red with anger. " So, mademois-
elle, that is the way you treat your friends ! Fifteen thousand
francs ! It is ridiculous^ — absurd. ... Do you then take me for
an imbecile ? "

His attitude enraged Sarah.

" Yes," she snapped, " I take you for just that — an
imbecile ! "

And she left the room, banging the door, leaving Chilly wearily
staring after her.

Half an hour later she was back in his office. Advancing, she
held out her arms to Chilly and embraced him,

" So," he exclaimed joyfully. " You will stay ? "

" No," returned Sarah. " I am going ! But I want tO' — to
thank you. ..." And she burst into tears again.

Sarah signed her contract with the Comedie Frangaise the
same day. A week later Victor Hugo gave a banquet to celebrate
the looth performance of Ruy Bias.

It was in many ways a notable dinner. Not only did it
commemorate the triumph of his greatest play, but it was Sarah's
farewell to the company at the Odeon, her adieu to the stage on
which she had achieved renown.

170 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

And it was the last supper of Chilly, the director who had
helped to mould her fame. He died of heart failure at the table,
at the very moment when he was about to reply to the toast of
his health.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 171

CHAPTER XVI

The death of Chilly momentarily saddened Sarah Bernhardt,
but did not check her rapid advance to fame. That event indeed
once again brought her abruptly face to face with the elemental
facts of life ; and, like other experiences of the same nature,
had a profound effect on her character, while it served as
welding material for the art she displayed in her theatrical
interpretations.

Her nature was that of the true artist' — highly sensitive ; once
an impression was made on her it remained for ever as a com-
ponent part of the edifice of her talent. Just as a portrait painter,
away from his oils, will observe and remember in its minutest
detail some tantalising cast of expression in the face of his model
and will later reproduce it on canvas, so Sarah's brain was
constantly receiving impressions which she later translated into
life, through the medium of the characters she portrayed.

Sarah often told me of the fatal dinner during the course of
which the little director Chilly died.

" I shall never forget a detail of that night, as long as I live,"
she said. " It was so incredibly a masterpiece of the great
dramatist, Fate." (She frequently spoke in a figurative sense.)
" It all happened as though written, rehearsed and stage-managed
for weeks, with every person there an actor word-perfect.

" We were received at the entrance to the restaurant by Victor
Hugo himself. It was summer and extremely hot. Duquesnel,

172 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Chilly, Berton and I arrived all together in my carriage. Through-
out the journey from my flat, Berton and Chilly had been heaping
reproaches on me for my decision to leave the Odeon.

" Chilly was hurt and puzzled. He could not understand
why a difference of only three thousand francs a year should make
me leave the theatre which had been the birthplace of my
celebrity. Berton was loudly querulous ; he insisted on reminding
me that it was he who had procured me my first engagement at the
Odeon, and once came right out with the statement that it was
Sarcey who was at the back of my desire to leave the theatre.

" This latter statement, which was quite untrue and which
Berton must have known to have been untrue, angered me to
such an extent that I stopped the carriage.

" ' Monsieur,' I said to Berton, ' either you will retract what you
have just said, or you will get out of this carriage ! '

" ' Well, then, why are you leaving us ? ' demanded Berton
sulkily. The man was incorrigible. I laughed at him.

" ' If you insist upon knowing why I am leaving the Od^on,
Pierre,' I answered him, ' it is because I can no longer remain at
the same theatre with you ! '

" Chilly looked at me strangely, but said nothing. I know
he was aware^ — the whole theatre was in possession of the main
facts by this time— that I had broken with Berton, and I think
he may have imagined there was some truth in the explanation
I had jestingly given. At any rate, he ceased his complaints
and said afterwards not a single word of protest at my leaving.

" I remember that, during the drive to the restaurant, Chilly
frequently complained of the heat. He had been working hard
all day, and we had, in fact, called at the theatre, and brought him

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 173

directly from it in his working-clothes. He was the most inde-
fatigable worker I have ever met.

" ' Ah,' said Victor Hugo, on perceiving me, ' here is Her
Majesty the Queen ! ' He seized my hand, kissed it twice and
then, drawing me to him, kissed me on both cheeks. It was a
characteristic salutation.

" ' I see that she is no longer the Queen, but has become again
the artiste of Victor Hugo ! ' " exclaimed Duquesnel.

" Hugo shook his head violently. ' No,' he cried, ' she is
more than an artiste, more than a Queen^ — she is a woman ! '

" We dined at a long table — more than sixty persons, includ-
ing practically the whole Ruy Bias company. My chair had been
placed at one end, but I had no sooner sat down than Hugo
began looking round and running his hand through his hair in
the nervous fashion I remember so well. "Wben he saw me, he
cried out : ' Ah, no ! My dinner will be spoiled ! ' Then he
added, speaking to Essler who was seated immediately opposite
him : * Jane, you are older than Sarah ; take the seat of honour
at the end, and tell her Majesty to come here ! '

" Jane did as he requested, but with excusably bad grace.
Before I had come to the Odeon, she had been its bright, particular
star.

" The order was given to open all the doors and windows, and
everyone was provided with fans, but the heat was stifling. No-
body could eat anything. Duquesnel sat next to me on one
side, and Theophile Gautier, the poet, on the other. Immediately
opposite to me was Victor Hugo. On his right was Chilly, and
on his left Madame Lambquin, who played the part of the
Camerera Major, and who was the doyenne of the Odeon.

174 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" I remember that I did not touch the first course at all^it
was a species of hors-d' ceuvres made from beetroot, a vegetable
which I then detested. Paul de St. Victor, who sat next to
Madame Lambquin, apparently adored the vegetable and ate so
much that the juice ran down his cheeks. For a poet, he was the
fattest and most repulsive being I have ever known. I hated
him, and he knew it.

" I managed to eat a little of the fish, which came next, but
the horrible manners of St. Victor had completely spoiled my
appetite. As I very seldom ate meat — I attribute my long hfe
partly to the fact that I have rarely departed from vegetarianism —
I got very little to eat that night.

" When the vegetable course was over, Duquesnel rose to
his feet and, in a few words, proposed our host, Victor Hugo's,
health. Hugo then replied in a long address, full of sentiment and
expression, in which he was good enough to refer to me as
the ' animatrice ' of the play.

" ' I,' he declared, ' have only written the piece, but she has
lived it ! ' Then, turning to me and bowing, he said : Mademois-
elle, you have a voice of gold ! '

" When I rose to my feet and started to reply, Paul de St.
Victor, who had been awaiting an opportunity to vent his spite,
brought down his glass so violently that it was broken. I handed
him mine.

" ' Use this, monsieur,' I said to him. ' You would not look
natural without a glass in your hand.'

" The table laughed, and I was given courage to continue. I
was in the middle of a little eulogy of my co-workers in the piece,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 175

when my gaze suddenly fell on the face of Chilly, and I stopped
short.

" The little director's face was ashen, where a moment before
it had been red and perspiring. His eyes were wide open and
staring at me, with a glassy look about them that frightened me.

" ' Chilly ! Mo7t ami ! ' I cried.

" His eyes met mine without a shade of expression, though his
mouth opened and shut, as if he was trying to speak.

" ' ChiUy ! ' I cried, terror-stricken, and everyone at the table
rose to their feet. I rushed to his side and, kneeling, put my arms
about him as he sat in his chair. ' Tell me, what is the matter ? '
I asked.

" ' Somebody is holding me ! ' he muttered, in a thick voice.
' I cannot move ! '

" ' It is the heat ; he has had a little stroke ; it is nothing ! '
said Victor Hugo, with authority.

" Chilly was carried into one of the small dining-rooms,
and laid on a couch. Victor Hugo and Duquesnel stood at
the door, as guards, to keep the curious away. To everyone
they declared that it was nothing and that Chilly would be all
right in a few moments.

" I returned to the table and sat down. In my heart I
realised that Chilly would not be all right' — that it was the end.
And I thought of all the times that this little man had befriended
me, reviewed in my mind the occasions — yes, even on that
very day^ — when I had been thoughtless and even brutal with
him. Ah, I was sorry ! If I could but have obtained his
forgiveness. ...

" No sooner had this idea come into my head than I rushed

176 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

away to put it into execution. I would fall on my knees beside
my friend and teacher, and beg his forgiveness. . . .

" At the door I was met by Victor Hugo. One look at his
face and I knew that I was too late.

" Raising his voice, Hugo announced to the room : ' Monsieur
Chilly has been taken to his home ; we hope that he will recover
to-morrow.' He could not tell them the truth, as they sat there
at his table. Then, to me, in reply to my mute and terrified
inquiry, he said, in a low voice : ' He has gone. ... A beautiful
death ! '

" Those who did not know the truth remained to finish dinner.
Duquesnel took me home. I cried all night. And the next day
a lawyer came to me and told me that almost the last act of
Chilly— he had threatened it, but I had never believed that he
would keep his word— had been to begin an action against me
for breach of contract. I lost the case, and was sentenced to
pay ten thousand francs damages, but this was paid by the
Comedie, as provided in my contract."

The death of Chilly was not the strangest event of that fatal
dinner. Madame Lambquin became suddenly ill. She told
everyone that a fortune-teller, only a few days previously, had
prophesied she would die within a week of the death of " a little
dark man." Chilly was small and dark^and precisely seven days
after his death, Madame Lambquin died.

Victor Hugo, when he heard of this latest tragedy, exclaimed :

" Without a doubt Death himself was at my dinner. I think
he aimed at me, but he must be short-sighted, for one of his
arrows went to my right, and slew Chilly, and the other swerved
to my left, and killed Lambquin ! "

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 177

A few days later Sarah received a note from Sarcey, asking
her to be present at a conference in the directors' office at the
Comedie, to decide which was to be her first role. Sarah wished
to play the part of Britanicus as her dehut, and naturally, as
Sarcey 's note spoke of a " conference," she anticipated that her
wishes were to be deferred to.

On the way to the theatre she confided her desire to play
Britanicus to Sarcey, who said nothing. Judge of Sarah's surprise,
therefore, when Sarcey opened the "conference" by announc-
ing abruptly : " Mile. Bernhardt believes that she would prefer
to make her dehut in Mademoiselle de Belle Isle."

Sarah was so astounded she could scarcely speak, and before
she could make an adequate protest she was outside the door of
Perrin's office, with the play a chose jugee. Then she turned upon
Sarcey furiously.

" Why did you do that ? " she asked.

" I wish you to play this part ! You can have your
Britanicus afterwards, if you like ! "

Sarcey spoke carelessly, and his manner was an indication of
the influence he exerted at the Comedie. Sarah was wise enough
not to dispute his decision, but she was nevertheless angry
with him, and refused to see or write to him for several
days.

Her anger was increased when she found that her role in Madem-
oiselle de Belle Isle was not in reality the most prominent part in
the play. Two other famous actresses, public favourites of the
Comedie, were in the cast — Sophie Croizette and Madeleine
Brohan. The latter, by her own request, retired from the play

during rehearsals. Sophie Croizette was Sarah's great rival for

M

178 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

popular favour. She had held the first female role at the Frangais
for several years — since before the war, in fact.

Sarah decided that she would play the name part, Mademoiselle
de Belle Isle, so extravagantly well that none of the audience
would spare a second thought for Croizette, in her part of the
Marquise de Prie, who in the play is kissed in the dark by the
Due de Richelieu, in mistake for the lady from Belle Isle. At
rehearsals Sarah was magnificent. Croizette, who was an intimate
friend, despite their rivalry, used to come to her in despair.

" You are splendid' — but you give no opportunity to the
rest of us ! "

The play was produced on November 6, 1872, and the first
act was a triumph for Sarah There was indeed every indication
that new glory was about to descend on the immortal queen of
Ruy Bias when, at the beginning of the second act, she caught
sight of her mother in a stage-box.

Julie was leaning back in a chair, her eyes closed, and beads
of perspiration on her forehead. Sarah knew immediately what
had happened. Her mother suffered from a weak heart, and several
times before had had a similar seizure.

The tragic death of Chilly, which she had all but witnessed,
was fresh in Sarah's mind, and doctors had told her years before
that she must expect her mother's disease to end fatally one day.
She watched the stage-box in agonised fashion, while the audience
became bewildered at the extraordinary change which had come
over their star.

Sarah stumbled through the rest of the play, and immediately
afterwards, learning that Julie had been carried there from the
theatre, hurried to her mother's home.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 179

Meanwhile the danger had passed. When Sarah arrived, she
found her mother pale, but otherwise recovered, and taking
nourishment.

Returning to her own flat she found a note from Sarcey :

" It was ludicrous. Shall I ever understand you ? The first
act was wonderful ; in the others you spoilt the play ! "

Furious that he should not have seen the reason for her
agitation, Sarah refused to make any excuse for herself or to give
him the slightest explanation. So, when his criticism of the play
appeared in Le Temps, five days later, he was evidently in two
minds as to whether to praise or condemn. His hesitation shows
itself in several passages.

At the beginning of his critique he said :

" It must be admitted that, independently of her personal
merit, there have formed around the person of Sarah Bernhardt
a number of true or false legends, which excite the curiosity of
the public. But it was a disappointment when she appeared.
Her costume exaggerated her slenderness, and her face had been
whitened too much with powder. The impression was not
agreeable."

This was because he had urged her to modify her costume
and she had not done so. Further on, Sarcey wrote that she
" trembled convulsively " during the play, and while admitting
that she had " marvellous grace," still insisted that she " was lost
in the strong passages." But he added, " were she to possess a

i8o Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

vibrant dramatic quality equal to her enchanting voice, she would
be a perfect actress, an actress unequalled at the present day."
This, when his previous articles are remembered, was quite an
admission, and he ended his article with a real eulogy :

" At the close of the play the artiste apparently found herself,
and for a brief space we could recognise in her Our Sarah — the
Sarah of twenty successes."

By the way, he had not admitted one of those successes
himself !

It was only after the publication of his critique- — which in the
circumstances Sarah recognised as just- — that he discovered the
real reason for her poor performance. He then had the grace
not only to apologise personally, but to publish an account of what
had happened in a later issue of Le Temps.

His apology, however, could not alter the fact that the public
thought her explanation only an artiste's excuse, and the honours
of the play went definitely to Sophie Croizette, who was really
one of the most accomplished artistes who have ever adorned the
French stage.

For the next ten years there was a terrific rivalry between
these two — not only in Paris, but abroad.

If Sarah created a role one week, Sophie created one the next,
and critics were divided in their opinion as to which was the
greater actress. If Sarah went on tour, so did Sophie ; and the
duel between these two close friends kept Paris perpetually
entertained.

It was generally agreed, finally, that Sarah was the greater

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her i8i

actress, but that she was also the more eccentric, the more
apt to lose her head ; nor, it was said, did she have the innate
technique that distinguished Croizette's performances.

Croizette had few enemies — and perhaps that is why she has
been forgotten, or nearly so, by the public. Sarah, on the con-
trary, used to say that she counted a day lost wherein she had not
made " either a true enemy or a supposedly true friend."

i82 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XVII

Episode now succeeded episode in the life of the young actress —
for she was still not more than twenty-eight years old.

She quarrelled with Francisque Sarcey and fell in love with
an old friend of the Odeon — Mounet-SuUy, the handsomest actor
on the French stage, who, like Sarah, had been taken from the
Odeon by the management of the Theatre Fran9ais.

She acquired her famous coffin, which never afterwards left
her, and in which her remains now lie at P^re Lachaise.

She was sued right and left for debt.

Her sister Regine died.

Her own health became precarious, and a physical examina-
tion showed a spot on her right lung.

Most of these events occurred within the first three years of
her re-engagement at the Comedie Fran9aise. Her eight years
at this theatre were among the most eventful of her life.

During them she became the darling of one part of Paris, and
the scorn of another part. During them she was credited with
having had " affairs " with no less than nine prominent men.
During them her fame spread throughout the world.

Her quarrel with Sarcey dated from the moment she felt
herself strong enough to stand without his aid. I shall never
believe that her Uaison with Sarcey was actuated by anything

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 183

except the motives of professional expediency. In fact, she
practically admitted this to me.

" Sarcey," she said, " was one of those highly-gifted but
intolerant men whose one aim in life is to mould the opinions of
their friends and intimates to suit themselves. He was a brilliant
writer, a still more brilliant conversationalist, and there is no doubt
that, as a theatrical critic, he was head and shoulders above any
other then living in France.

" His judgment was deferred to by most of the theatrical
managers, and especially by those at the Comedie, whose political
views and connections were the same as those of Sarcey himself.
It was said that Sarcey could procure the admission or the resigna-
tion of anybody at the Comedie. He was extremely opinionated
and very hard to change once he had made up his mind. He
hardly ever forgot a slight, and never an insult.

" He was unquestionabl}^ an enemy of mine from the beginning,
and I made him my friend when it became necessary to do so,
but not because I was in any doubt as to his character. I found that,
like many geniuses, he was insupportable in private life. He would
rave and tear his hair twice or three times a day over matters
without the slightest consequence. He usurped the privilege of
' protecting ' me, and as a consequence a wrong interpretation
was put on our friendship by the theatrical world, to which the
word ' protector ' meant only one thing — lover.

" People were bound to comment on the fact when a promi-
nent man like Sarcey came night after night to the theatre and
insisted on seeing me home. Why, he used to speak of me to
his friends as his proUgee. What actually happened was that
my art and my determination to succeed triumphed over his

184 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

enmity, and, finding that he could not hamper my career, he did
his best to make people think he was responsible for it.

" He was subject to fits of extreme jealousy, and would carry
on for hours if I so much as accepted another man's invitation to
dinner. He acted as though he owned me, and when things got
to this pass I decided to demonstrate to him that he did not."

She accomplished this very effectually by yielding to the
supplications of Mounet-Sully.

When Sarah re-entered the Comedie Fran9aise, Mounet-
Sully was the reigning power there. His fame was widespread ;
he was probably not only the finest but also the handsomest
actor on the European stage.

Of Mounet-Sully it was written : " He is as handsome as a
god, like a hero of Greek tragedy," and it was of these tragedies
that he was incomparably the greatest interpreter of his epoch.

There is reason to believe that Sarah's affair with Sully was
secret for many months during which she and Sarcey, who sus-
pected nothing at the time, remained friends.

Later, however, he began to hear gossip linking their names,
and once he overheard Sarah address Mounet-Sully by the familiar
" tu." This may or may not have been significant, for artists of
the French stage generally use the second person singular in
talking among themselves.

Mounet-Sully also was young, and of a jealous temperament.
There came a day when he could no longer bear the covert sneers
of the critic. Coming down from his dressing-room after a rehearsal,
he found Sarcey striding backwards and forwards on the stage.

" What are you doing here ? " he shouted. " Do not deny
it- — you are waiting for Sarah ! "

Sarah Bernhardt (aged 30) and her son, Maurice, on the only occasion

when he acted with her.

Photo, Henri Manuel.]

P.ii

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 185

" What if I am ? " demanded Sarcey imperturbably. " Who
has a better right ? "

" Pig ! Son of a pig ! " cried the enraged young actor,
losing all self-control at the cool cynicism of the critic. " I
challenge you to a duel ! "

" I do not fight with children ! " replied Sarcey, and spat on
the floor to signify his contempt.

Sarah had been standing in the wings, and had overheard the
dispute. She now came forward.

" Francisque, take me to supper ! " she said, darting an angry
look at Mounet -Sully. She could never bear these open quarrels
between her admirers.

The actor did not speak to her for a month, but they composed
their differences later and remained lovers for almost a year, only
to separate again as the result of another fit of jealousy on Mounet-
Sully's part.

For a short while they were again enemies, and then, once
more deciding to make it up, remained friends throughout the
remainder of Mounet-SuUy's long career. When he married —
his grand-daughter recently obtained a premier prix at the Paris
Conservatoire^ — Sarah was present at the wedding, and sent the
young couple a magnificent gift.

In 1874 Sarah was taken ill, as the result of a cold, which
developed into pleurisy. She was in bed for a month, and at
the end of this period an examination by three doctors revealed
that one of her lungs was slightly affected. She was advised to
leave the theatre, and to go to Switzerland for six months.

" How long do you give me to live ? " she asked one of the
physicians.

i86 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" Not longer than five years, if you do not take a complete
rest until you are cured," he replied.

" Five years ! But that is a lifetime ! " she answered.
" When I was seventeen the doctors gave me only three years,
and I have lived thirteen. I shall continue acting until I die ! "

And, despite all remonstrances from her friends, she returned
to the theatre as soon as she was able to leave her bed. To the
doctors' astonishment also, ten months later the spot on her lung
completely disappeared. Perhaps it had never existed !

About this time she was asked by an admirer what he could
send her as a souvenir.

" They say I am to die," said Sarah, gaily, " so you may send
me a coffin ! "

The admirer took her at her word, and a week later she received
a letter from a famous firm of coffin makers, stating that an order
had been received for a coffin for mademoiselle, which was to be
constructed according to her own wishes.

Sarah was most particular in regard to this coffin. She made
several designs, only to discard them one after the other. Finally
she agreed that it should be constructed of fine-grained rosewood,
and that the handles and " hoops " should be of solid silver.
She afterwards had these changed to gold, but subsequently, during
one of her frequent periods of impecuniosity, she sold the golden
hoops and had them replaced with the silver ones that were on
the coffin when she was buried.

For the remainder of her life this coffin, " le cercueil de Sarah
Bernhardt," never left her, even when she was travelling. It
attained an almost legendary fame. She had a mahogany trestle
made for the coffin, on which it stood at the end of her great bed,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 187

so that she could see it from her pillow, without an effort, on
awakening.

" To remind me that my body will soon be dust and that my
glory alone will live for ever ! " she said.

" How long will it last ? " she inquired of the makers when
they delivered the coffin.

" For centuries ! " replied they.

" It will need to last at least one, for I am determined to
disappoint the doctors and live to be a hundred ! " she answered.

She delighted to be photographed lying, dressed in different
costumes, in her coffin. More than fifty different photographs
and sketches were made of her in this situation. On occasions,
when guests came to her house for tea, she would serve it to them
on the coffin.

Once she held a mock funeral. The rosewood coffin with its
golden ornaments was brought with much pomp and ceremony
into the studio-salon at the rear of her apartment, and Sarah,
dressed in a long white robe and with a lily in her hand, climbed
into it and lay at full-length as though dead.

While I played the " Funeral March " by Chopin on the piano,
the poet Robert de Montesquiou ceremoniously placed lighted
candles around the coffin ; while the other guests, who included
Jeanne Bernhardt, Madame Guerard and Madame de Winter,
kept up a monotonous chant, reminiscent of the burial
service.

She carried the coffin ever3rwhere with her. It was a sight
to see it loaded on top of the ancient carriage in which she was
wont to make her provincial trips. At hotels in which she stayed,
the coffin was invariably taken into her bedroom before she herself

i88 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

would enter it, and placed in the accustomed position at the foot
of the bed.

On one occasion when we were touring the South of France,
the personnel of a hotel at Nimes struck sooner than permit the
coffin to be brought into the hotel. The superstitious proprietor
was in tears, and swore that the funereal object meant unhappiness
to his family and bad luck to his business.

Nothing daunted, Sarah insisted on the coffin being brought
in, and then called together the members of the troupe.

" You and I," she said to me, " will be the cooks. You,"
indicating Pierre Berton (then my husband), " will be the waiter."

Other members of the troupe were given their parts as chamber
maids, dishwashers, valets and the like, and for a whole day we
ran that hotel. The next day the personnel, having been given
free tickets to the theatre, were so impressed by Sarah's personality
that they returned to work in a body, and the manager, declaring
that he had never eaten better meals than those prepared by
Sarah and myself, refused to accept a franc in payment for our
rooms and board.

As soon as it was finished, Sarah had the coffin taken to
her flat and placed alongside her Louis XVI. bed. Whenever
visitors came to call upon her, she would make a point of showing
them this strange piece of furniture.

Her sister R^gine, who was tubercular, had been sent to
Switzerland, but when her disease became complicated with
another malady, all hope was given up, and she returned to Paris,
to her sister's flat.

Sarah had only just moved into this new home and had only
one bedroom, so Regine and she at first shared the same bed.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 189

Regine's condition grew so serious, however, that the doctors
warned Sarah that she could no longer sleep with her sister
without a serious risk of contracting the malady.

Accordingly, Sarah made up a bed in the coffin and slept in
that.

When the doctor came he was horrified.

" Take that thing out ! " he ordered. " It is not yet time ! "

With some difficulty Sarah convinced him that the coffin was
not meant for her sister, but was her own bed. A few days later
Regine died.

The tragedy had its effect on Sarah's life for a year or more,
and she became a devout worker. Her name gradually ceased
to be connected by gossipy writers with the scandals of the day.
But after a year of mourning she flung off her mask of grief and
" La Grande Sarah," as she was known, again became a reigning
queen of Paris.

She fitted up one of the rooms of her flat as a studio, and here,
when she was not at the theatre or resting, she worked at painting
and sculpture.

Sarah Bernhardt, as Charles de Lagrille said, was not simply
an incomparable artiste ; she was the artiste^ — artiste in the most
complete sense of the word. She understood and realised in the
most perfect fashion the ideal of Beauty.

Sarah was not only the interpreter of Phedre,

" La fill e de Minos et de PasiphcB,"

that demi-goddess whom she incarnated so superbly ; she was
also the wise genius who discovered and launched poets and
authors without number— Coppee, Mendfes, Richepin, and the two

I go Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Rostands, father and son. But her love of beauty was not con-
fined to the theatre alone ; she was equally at home in all branches
of Art ; she was novelist, dramatist, painter and sculptor.

Sarah Bernhardt published, in 1878, as we shall see, a book
which was greatly appreciated by the literary critics of the time
and which was entitled " In the Clouds." Replying to the famous
and scurrilous publication " Sarah Barnum," she wrote in retahation
a work called " Marie Pigeonnier." She was also the author
of her own " Memoirs," and of two modest works of fiction, one
of which was published only a few years before her death, as
well as several short stories.

Three successes were recorded by Sarah Bernhardt, the drama-
tist. They were L'Aveu, produced at the Odeon in 1888 by
such interpreters as Paul Mounet, Marquet, Raphaele, Sisos and
Samary ; Adrienne Lecouvreur, a piece in five acts, in which she
played the title part herself, and in which have since played such
distinguished actors as de Max, Gerval, Decoeur and Charlotte
Barbier ; and Un Cceur d' Homme, a three-act play, which
Henry Roussel and Emmy Lyn produced in 1909.

But the theatre is only one sphere of Art. The great actress
was also a great painter. Her pictures, said critics, lacked the
masterly technique that only long experience and training could
have given her, but they were frank, well-proportioned, and dis-
tinguished for their colour values.

Just after she returned to the Comedie Fran9aise, she painted
my portrait, and this picture, needless to say, is still one of
my most prized possessions. It is reproduced in this book.

At the Salon of 1878 she showed a remarkable composition
entitled " Young Girl and Death." This canvas represented

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 191

Death clutching at an artiste with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.
It was an indication of the morbid strain in her character.

In 1872, after her first triumph at the Comedie, the sculptor
Mathieu-Mesnier asked for permission to make her bust. She
consented, watched his work, and asked innumerable questions.
Thereafter, nothing would do but that she herself must become
a sculptress.

Her first attempt in this direction was a medallion bust of her
aunt at Neuilly. This was finished in one night and when ex-
hibited astonished the critics by its virility and resemblance to
the model. Mathieu-Mesnier continued to instruct her, and she
passed most of her nights in modelling.

Her next effort was a bust of her young sister, R^gine —
made a few days before the latter's death. Others of her best
sculptures (many of which were sold at the recent auction in
Paris) were " After the Tempest," a group in marble ; busts of
Victorien Sardou, Blanche Barretta, Busnach (the dramatist
who prepared Zola for the theatre), Henry de la Pomoraye,
Coquelin, junior ; her son, Maurice ; Louise Abbema and Edmond
Rostand. The last was completed after the poet's death, and
was exhibited in the Rostand museum.

192 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XVIII

" La Grande Sarah " had now become an extraordinary figure
in the contemporary life of Paris, There were two camps, one
composed of her friends, the other of her enemies, and at one
time it was difficult to know which group was the more numerous.

The friends of Sarah were called the " Sara dot eurs," and
cartoons of the great actress surrounded by her court became
commonplaces in the metropolitan press. The weeklies were
full of real or imagined escapades of the triumphant artiste of
the Comedie Frangaise.

It was said that she bathed in milk ; that she had made the
circuit of the Champs Elysees in the snow, with neither shoes nor
stockings on ; that she had entered the cage of a lion at the St.
Cloud fete, and subsequently purchased the lion ; that she had a
regular menagerie chained up in her flat and that in consequence
the neighbours had complained and that she was to be forced to
move ; that she had been twice seen on the boulevards with the
young Prince Napoleon, who was supposed to be in exile ; that
she was at heart a Bonapartist, and was secretly working for the
restoration of the monarchy ; that she had an enormous appetite
for strong drink ; that she had ordered a coach-and-four in gold
and ebony that was to cost two hundred thousand francs ; that
she had slapped the face of Perrin, the director of the Theatre
Frangais ; that she was not a woman at all, but a boy masquerad-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 193

ing in woman's clothes (this was doubtless owing to Sarah's start-
ling success in young male parts) ; that Gambetta himself had
called upon her, and had been received in the actress's cabinet de
toilette, where she happened to be washing herself ; that she had
given five hundred francs to a blind beggar, because she thought
he resembled a former lover ; that she dressed up as a man and
frequented public balls in disguise, challenging men friends to
duels and then revealing herself to them.

I have no way of verifying any of these tales. From what I
myself know of Sarah and her way of living, I expect that parts
of them, at any rate, were true.

It was a saying that there were three celebrated hours in
Paris : One o'clock, Gambetta smokes his second cigar ; four
o'clock, prices fall at the Bourse ; five o'clock, Sarah receives for
tea.

Every afternoon her flat was filled with a motley assembly of
the great and the nearly great. Sarah used to receive them in
her sculptor's clothes, a kind of pyjama costume, designed by
herself and made of silk. She would stand at the entrance of her
workroom, imperious as a queen receiving homage from her people.

The first thing guests perceived on entering was a gigantic
dog on a short chain, which growled and sprang at everyone who
came in. Many people could not be persuaded to visit Sarah on
account of this dog. My aunt was one — I never got her past the
door, where she would sit and wait for me patiently, while telling
the growling animal, from a safe distance, what she thought of
him.

This dog was a great friend of mine, and not the brute which

sprang at my throat in the manner related in a preceding chapter.

N

194 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

He never growled at me, though I was in and out of Sarah's
home at all hours of the day. I used to help her to mix her clay,
and several times posed for an effect that she wanted to get
perfect.

A flight of five or six stairs led up to the first reception room,
where champagne cup usually stood on a small table ; and in the
hall outside this room a disagreeable surprise awaited the unwary
visitor. This was a full-sized monkey, which was fastened by one
leg to a chair, but was otherwise free to move about — which he
did, with a great chattering and gnashing of teeth.

The little drawing-room had in it two birdcages and a great
tank of goldfish, while cats and small dogs roamed about in a
most casual way. Philippe, an old waiter whom Sarah had
persuaded to leave the Cafe du Foyer (?) and enter her service,
was in perpetual terror of all these animals and eventually left
Sarah's service, after he had been bitten in the hand by the
monkey.

Sarah usually had something new in the way of statuary to
show her guests. I remember well when she did her " Medee,"
a piece almost as big as she was herself ; and once, when I entered
unannounced, I found her starting the bust of the famous Adolphe
de Rothschild, for which he had promised her ten thousand francs.
Sarah had a lot of trouble with this piece of work. She said it
was because the Baron continually changed his expression. At
any rate, when the bust was finally achieved, all Rothschild's
comment, after looking at it, was to say drily :
" Is that me ? "

Then he turned to a writing-table to draw up an order on his
bank for the ten thousand francs, only to be arrested by a crash.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 195

Sarah stood in the centre of the floor panting, her eyes flashing
and her breast heaving. On the floor lay the bust, smashed to
a thousand pieces.

Baron de Rothschild, without a word, turned and left the
room. The next day he received his bust' — in a thousand pieces —
" with Sarah Bernhardt's compliments."

The story became common property and Rothschild never
spoke to her again. She remained friends with others of the same
family, however, and there came a day when she was grateful
for their help.

Sarah fitted up a magnificent studio near the Place de Clichy,
in the avenue now chiefly distinguished for the number of night
establishments which grace — or disgrace — it. It was a large,
bare place, with immense windows, several step-ladders, and a
divan covered with skins. For principal adornment it had a
single, magnificent, white bear skin, which was the first present
Sarah received from Georges Clairin, the painter and mural
decorator — of whom more anon. He had been her admirer
for years but it was not until 1879 that she yielded to his per-
sistent pleadings and became really intimate with him.

The place was littered with scraps of plaster, old frames,
cross-trees, brushes, supports, mallets, chisels and other para-
phernalia of the sculptor and painter.

An old man who had once been an actor of repute, but who had
been reduced to poverty and disgrace by morphine, was employed
as a sort of general factotum. He would be an exemplary servant
for a month or so, and then the drug passion would seize him and
he would disappear for a week, during which the studio became
littered with all kinds of refuse, from broken statues — which had

196 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

been thrown violently to the floor by Sarah in fits of dissatisfaction,
despondency or rage — to empty bottles of champagne and
liqueurs, with which she was wont to entertain her guests.

About this time, if my memory serves me right, occurred the
famous duel fought by Richard O'Monroy, the writer in La
Vie Parisienne, and Edouard de Lagrenee, a distinguished young
diplomat, whose infatuation for Sarah was like that of so many
other men — terrific while it lasted, but of brief duration,

Sarah was in the habit of giving " soirees amusantes " in
her atelier on nights when she was not billed to act at the Comedie.

These soirees consisted for the most part of conversation,
recitals by poetic friends of the actress, gossip, and sometimes
dancing. They were, in the word of Paris, " tres a la
mode."

Sarah's invitations were much sought after, but she never
sent a formal one. It was understood that friends of hers were
always welcome, and welcome also to bring any friends of their
own. Thus Sophie Croizette — who, despite her rivalry with
Sarah, had remained a friend outside of theatrical hours — appeared
about nine o'clock one night, dragging by the hand a pale,
anaemic-looking youngster, who appeared to be extremely bashful
and intensely desirous of being elsewhere,

" See what I have caught ! " cried Sophie, advancing into
the atelier and dragging her young man after her. But the
" catch " suddenly twisted his hand from hers and, without a
word, turned tail and ran away. They rushed after him, to see
his coat tails flying down the street fifty yards away.

" Who," demanded Sarah, when she had finished laughing,
" was that extraordinary person ? "

Sarah Bernhardt in Theodora.

p. igf"'.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 197

" That," answered Sophie Croizette, " was a Consul of France
— and he is madly in love with you ! "

Sarah looked at her, astonished.

" But," she said, " I have never seen him before ! "

" He has seen every performance you have given for nearly
six months, since he returned from Rome," explained Sophie.

" But who is he ? " demanded Sarah, enormously intrigued,
but uncertain whether to be pleased or to be angry.

" He is a young Republican, a protege of MacMahon, and was
made a consul. His family is a very distinguished one ; you
will find it in the Liste des Families," explained Mile. Croizette.
" He is also a poet, and has written some fine verses about you,
which he has been afraid to send. He is the most bashful man
in all Paris ! "

This was enough to excite the interest of Sarah Bernhardt !

A few nights later she perceived the bashful one in the back
seat of a box near the stage. She smiled at him, but the poor
young man was too timid to smile back, Sarah determined that,
by hook or by crook, she would get to know him. He had, she
decided, a face of singular beauty.

From inquiries she made here and there among her friends,
she found that he had served in the war, and that he had
an enviable record for bravery. It is thus with many timid,
unassuming men.

De Lagrenee was a man of noble artistic temperament, very
much the idealist and the passionate lover — but so far he had done
his passionate loving at a distance.

" Who is the remarkable-looking man with the decoration in
that box ? " she asked Mounet-Sully, who was pla5dng with her.

198 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" That is Edouard de Lagrcnee," answered Mounet-SuUy.
" He is very distinguished in the diplomatic service,"

During the first entr'acte, through a hole in the curtain, she
pointed out de Lagrenee to a call-boy.

" You see that man ? " she said. " Send him to me ! "

But her messenger returned without him.

" Monsieur thanks Mile. Sarah Bernhardt for her courtesy, but
begs to state that he is a worshipper on a lower plane, and would
not dare to approach the altar of his goddess ! " was the quaint
reply of the diplomat.

Sarah did not know whether to be offended or pleased. In
any case she was immensely interested, and determined at once
to bring about an occasion on which de Lagrenee would be obliged
to meet her.

Accordingly she made inquiries and found that he was in
the habit of frequenting the Salon held by Madame Lobligeois
in her house in the Avenue des Champs Elysees — a villa set back
in what were then woods — which had become a rendezvous of
the intellectual set. Through her old friend Duquesnel, still
director of the Odeon, she arranged to be invited to one of these
exclusive affairs, and that her intention to be present should be
kept a secret.

The afternoon came. De Lagrenee, according to his custom,
was entertaining the company at the house of Mme. Lobligeois
with his views on artistic subjects, when the door opened without
warning and Sarah swept in, followed by that cohort of faithful,
gay young idolators whom she termed her " performing seals."

As had been arranged beforehand, Duquesnel hastened for-
ward and, on seeing de Lagrenee, cried :

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 199

" Ah, my dear fellow, allow me to present you to Her Majesty
the Queen of Paris ! "

There being no avenue of escape, de Lagrenee, who, although
genuinely timid and embarassed, was none the less a gentleman,
found himself pushed forward into the presence of the woman
whom he had, for so long and from such a distance, adored.

Sarah at once drew him aside and began an animated, if one-
sided, conversation. De Lagrenee was too reticent or too bash-
ful to say much ; but under Sarah's friendly smile he gradually
gained courage, with the result that when she gave him an invita-
tion to visit her in her dressing-room and afterwards to sup alone
with her at her flat, he stammered his acceptance, overwhelmed
with a mixture of confusion and joy.

From then on the affair followed the customary course.
Sarah made excessive demands on de Lagrenee. She insisted
that he should take her everywhere and be seen with her in public
restaurants and in society. From a distant worshipper, he became
her abject slave. People called him " Sarah's messenger boy,"
and " Sarah's little dog." Never a day passed without a mass
of fresh flowers being sent to her dressing-room by the young
diplomat.

At length the scandalous rumour that he was Sarah's latest
conquest reached the ears of his aristocratic parents, who belonged
to a set which severely disapproved of the stage and everyone
connected with it . Aghast, they sent for their son and commanded
him to sever his connection with the actress at once.

By nature a dutiful son, he agreed, although not without
considerable heart-pangs, as may be imagined. When Sarah
heard about his pledge, however, and the arguments that had

200 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

exacted it, she went to the house of his parents in a fury, insisted
on admittance, created a terrible scene, and frightened and
astonished them both beyond measure. Finally when de
Lagrenee appeared, she overwhelmed his halting objections and
carried him off with her in her carriage.

A week later de Lagrenee was directed to join the French
consular staff at St, Petersburg, that being the city the farthest
away from Sarah that his parents could think of. And the
romance was effectually stopped. Before he left for Russia,
however, an incident occurred which nearly cost de Lagrenee
his life.

Richard O'Monroy, besides writing his weekly chronicles in
La Vie Parisienne, was one of those society hangers-on who love
to boast of their conquests of women. He used to do this, not
only in allegedly witty conversation, but, in veiled terms, in
the salacious weekly to which he contributed.

He chose this moment to relate — ^using assumed names, of
course, but with descriptions which revealed better than mere
names could have done — how, in a quarter of an hour, he had
made the conquest of Sarah Bernhardt !

Sarah was terribly offended, not so much at the way the article
was written, but at the idea that any man could dare to claim
that he had " conquered " her — and in fifteen minutes at that !

Hurrying to de Lagrenee, she laid the article before him. The
young consular official was furious, and sent an immediate challenge
to O'Monroy, despite the fact that the chronicler was a notoriously
expert swordsman, while de Lagrenee was small, physically
weak, and no fencer at all.

The duel was arranged according to the code, and was fixed

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 201

to take place in the Bois de Boulogne one morning at five o'clock.
Sarah watched it from the closed windows of her coach. Neither
antagonist knew that she was there, the coach being hidden
behind some trees in an allee usually reserved for riders.

As was to be expected, de Lagrenee was overwhelmed from the
outset, and in less than two minutes he was severely wounded in
the thigh.

Seeing him lying bleeding on the ground, Sarah would have
run to him and covered him with caresses, but she was prevented
by her companions.

During his convalescence, she was barred from the sick-
room and had to content herself with daily letters and flowers.

As soon as he recovered, he was ordered to his post at St.
Petersburg, and the short-lived romance was over.

Sarah never forgot de Lagrenee, and for several years she kept
up a correspondence with him. His letters which, according to
her custom, she destroyed— were full of tender, poetic messages,
pleading love of and faith in her. A man less fitted to be a
diplomat probably never existed. Sarah always spoke of him
to me in terms of genuine affection.

202 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XIX

Nowadays almost anything can be said about a theatrical star
and her manager is glad. He knows that the more she is written
about, the more she is talked about, the larger will be the receipts
of the theatre at which she is playing. Even the ancient and
eminently respectable Comedie Frangaise has been obliged to
accept this point of view — though not without some pangs, I
imagine. Witness the celebrated escapade of Mile. Cecile Sorel,
great and exquisite interpreter of Moliere, who two years ago visited
a public gallery and smashed an uncomplimentary " portrait "
of her by Bib, a young cartoonist. The press of the world was
full of the incident, but, so far as is known, the actress was not
hauled over the coals by the administration of the Comedie
Fran9aise.

But in the seventies and eighties a different view was taken
of such matters. An artiste was supposed to be contented
with reviews of the plays she appeared in, and the Comedie
Frangaise especially deplored any effort on the part of an individual
actress to make herself known by any other method than the
excellence of her acting.

Thus it may be imagined that Sarah was rapidly making
enemies for herself. One could not open a newspaper or a mag-
azine without reading some article devoted to her, without seeing
an account of some escapade of hers. Sarah herself has said in

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 203

her "Memoirs" that she regretted this publicity, without being
able to suppress it, and that she never read the newspapers.
Perhaps she may be pardoned this slight lapse of memory.

Many times I have found her in the morning, her bed covered
with marked copies of publications sent her by friends, and by
writers of paragraphs about her. She gloried in them. She
did not care what people said about her, so long as they said
something. She herself, to my certain knowledge, inspired many
of the most far-fetched stories.

When she found that the cartoonists had seized upon her
slender figure and fuzzy hair as heaven-sent objects on which to
exercise their talents, she wore clothes that accentuated her
slimness, and her hair became more studiously unruly than ever.
When she found that every foolish thing she did was immediately
commented upon in a score of newspapers, hostile as well as
friendly, she spent hours thinking out new escapades, and made
foolishness an art.

She was the first actress who really understood the value of
publicity.

Genius can be as eccentric as it pleases, but eccentricity
without genius becomes a boomerang, to hurl fools into oblivion.

Had Sarah been a lesser woman all this publicity would have
ruined her, but she really was a genius, and not only possessed
a talent for self-advertisement, but had a genuine passion for
work. People who had read dozens of idiotic stories about her
would visit the theatre prepared to scoff — but they remained to
applaud her frantically.

She was bigger than all the publicity she obtained. Her art
justified all. But her manager, Perrin, and the committee of

204 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

the Comedie could not see things that way. They were horrified
and disgusted at the notoriety that had descended on the vener-
able House of Moliere, as the result of the follies of their star.

Perrin used to remonstrate violently with her.

" You are a disgrace to the theatre and to your art ! " he
said in my hearing on one occasion. " You will ruin the Comedie
with your insanities ! "

" I will resign, then ! " said Sarah promptly. And Perrin
immediately became contrite, for Sarah drew more people to the
box-office than any two artists the Comedie possessed, even in-
cluding Mounet-SuUy and Sophie Croizette.

Louis Giffard was then one of the lions of Paris. Giffard
was a balloonist, and balloon ascensions were the clou of the 1878
Exhibition. Giffard had long been an admirer of Sarah's, and
as he started one of his ascents he threw a wreath of flowers at
her as she stood in a little group of spectators. For this gentle
act of courtesy she invited him to dine with her.

" Tiens, Sarah ! " said Clairin, during this festivity, " there
is something you have not done yet — you have not gone up in a
balloon ! "

" She has her head always in the clouds ! " grumpily put in
Alexandre Dumas, junior, who had had many a lively passage
of arms with his most unruly interpreter. But Sarah took up
the suggestion immediately.

Turning enthusiastically to Giffard, she asked : " It is true ?
Can you take me up in your balloon ? "

" It would be the crowning point of my career ! " responded
Giffard gallantly.

" When can we go ? " asked Sarah, all excitement.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 205

" To-morrow morning, if you wish ! "

Sarah seized Georges Clairin by the arm. " And you, Georges
• — will you come into the clouds with me, too ? "

" He would be a poor poet who would not follow an angel into
her natural element ! " answered Clairin, kissing her.

Everyone present was sworn to strict secrecy, and the next
morning, at seven o'clock, we trooped out to the space just out-
side the city gates where Giffard's balloon was in readiness. He
had been there since dawn, making his preparations, and when we
arrived everything was ready.

Sarah, as she started to climb into the balloon, turned and
saw me crying.

" What is the matter, ma petite Therese ? " she asked, putting
her arms around me. I said that I wanted to go, too.

" There is no room," said Giffard. " You shall make an
ascent with me another time."

" But I want to go with Sarah ! " I wailed.

Everyone laughed, and Gustave Dore, the illustrator, caught
me up in his arms. " But, ma cherie," he remonstrated, " sup-
pose the balloon falls and you are all killed ? "

" I would not care, so long as I was with my Sarah ! " I replied
stoutly.

There was a roar of laughter, and then Sarah was hoisted into
the basket by Clairin and Giffard, both of whom mounted after
her. There was a shout of " Cast off," and the next thing I knew
the balloon was hundreds of feet above us, the three in the basket
shrilling some indistinguishable words of farewell.

Somebody pointed out the balloon to Perrin, who was on his
way to his office.

2o6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" There goes your pensionnaire ! " he was told.

Perrin at first did not understand.

" Sarah Bernhardt is in that balloon ! "

Perrin angrily rushed to the theatre, called together a special
meeting of the committee of administration, announced the news,
and said that he had decided to fine Sarah a thousand francs.

" I have had enough of her imbecilities ! " he declared.

The balloon did not fly very far and came down seventy miles
from Paris ; and that evening the three aeronauts were back
again, Sarah delighted beyond words with her experience.

In the morning she was informed by Perrin that she was to
be fined. Sarah flew into a rage, went home, wrote out her resigna-
tion, and sent it to Perrin by a messenger. As usual, the threat
prevailed. The fine was withdrawn, and so was Sarah's resigna-
tion. But Perrin did not forgive her for a long time.

For a year or more it was open war between Sarah Bernhardt
and the directors of the Comedie. Most of the men in the com-
pany sided against Sarah. She often complained that her male
associates of the stage were far more jealous than the women, and
that they would stoop to greater meannesses to revenge themselves.
They caused her so many petty annoyances that she finally made
up her mind to leave the Comedie.

The idea grew on her. She felt, as she expressed it, a prisoner
in a cage of lions. Not only did they want to control her life in
the theatre, but her private life was subject to their interference
as well.

Time and time again she threatened to resign. Finally, to
appease her, they had to promise to make her a " full member "
of the company — an honour not usually given till after fifteen or

Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet.
From the well-known painting by Louis Besnard.

Photo, Henri Manuel.}

p. 202.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 207

twenty years with the Comedie — and accordingly raise her salary.
But still she was discontented. She was making 20,000 francs a
year, and spending 50,000.

She decided that space was too restricted in her flat and
resolved to build for herself a private house. Private houses in
Paris, then as now, were the property only of the wealthy.
Over nine hundred out of every thousand people live in flats.

She chose a magnificent plot on the rue Fortuny, in what is
now the exclusive residential section of the Plaine Monceau, but
which then was practically a desert. Felix Escalier, a famous
architect, was called into consultation by the actress, and together
they designed a three-story house of noble dimensions and beauti-
ful lines. Bordering it on two sides was to be a spacious garden.

Sarah could scarcely contain herself when the plans were
finally approved and the building begun. The work seemed to
her interminable. To hasten construction, a call was sent out for
more workmen, but none were to be had, so a band of her student
friends took off their coats, donned the white aprons of masons,
and gave their services free, joyful to be of use.

In a little under a year the house was finished, and Sarah ran-
sacked the shops of Paris for furniture and appointments,

Georges Clairin, madly in love with her, undertook to paint
four mural decorations, the largest of which was in the reception
hall. It represented nude figures gambolling on fleecy clouds,
and made an enormous sensation.

The sensation came from the fact that the head of the central
figure was undoubtedly that of Sarah, and there was considerable
discussion as to whether she had posed for the entire body. Clairin
finally settled the argument.

2o8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" A professional model posed for the body," he said. " Sarah
is much too thin."

The explanation satisfied everybody, for there was no gain-
saying the fact that Sarah was abnormally thin.

But the gossipy weeklies seized on the affair with avidity, and
Sarah's attachment to Georges Clairin soon became public property.
Of course, both were tremendously criticised. Their denials were
not listened to. Sarah was dumbfounded at the venom of some
of the attacks.

" These canaille ! " she said, contempt ously referring to her
critics. " They say that I am selfish — well, what woman is not ?
They say that I am greedy — but did you ever know me to have a
spare franc I could call my own ? They say I am cold and haughty,
but that is because I will not suffer the presence of fools ! They
say that I am indiscreet' — it is they who are indiscreet ! They
say that I have never really loved, that I am cruel and ambitious,
that I pull men down and climb over their bodies on my ascent
to fame — it is not true ! I am ambitious ; yes, and I am jealous
of a success won by hard work ; but I am haughty only to those
whom I despise, and I am cruel^ — never ! It is they who are cruel
to me ! "

" They delight in sticking knives into me ! " she declared on
another occasion.

" I hate them ! " she said again, passionately. " I hate them !
They tear down gods ! All Paris is my enemy and all Paris
is at my feet."

On other occasions she was merely scornful.

" Let them talk, these little people ! " she would say. " They
think they are throwing stones at me, but every stone goes to
help in building the structure of my success ! "

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 209

And it was true. The more people ranted against Sarah, the
greater she became. She was by now the greatest feminine
personahty — I say it in all seriousness — that France had known
since Joan of Arc.

Her romance with Georges Clairin was a beautiful thing. She
was, I am convinced, genuinely in love with the great painter.

She spent all her afternoons for weeks in Clairin's studio.
Sometimes they would work silently for hours, side by side,
scarcely exchanging a word. At others they would abandon
work and sit and talk to each other, oblivious of their surround-
ings. Sarah inspired many of Clairin's paintings, and was the
model for several.

Once I accompanied her to Clairin's studio. It was a great
room, bare of ornament except for easels and pictures that were
scattered about. Over a huge sofa hung a white bear skin, similar
to the one Clairin had given to Sarah.

Clairin was not there when we arrived, and Sarah astonished
me by crossing to the sofa and proceeding to take off her shoes
and stockings.

" Whatever are you doing ? " I demanded.

" He is going to paint my feet," she answered, and indicated
a large unfinished canvas, representing Sarah as a Gypsy boy,
in rags, wielding a mouth organ. A tame bear danced to the
music, and a greasy Bohemian, presumably the boy's father, turned
the handle of a street piano.

Where this canvas went I never knew. It was not exhibited,

as far as I am aware. Some said that Sarah destroyed it in a

fit of rage, when she quarrelled with Clairin. Her romances

invariably had their climax in these terrific disputes.

O

210 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

When the artist entered, clad in a green velvet jacket, Sarah
ran to him crying : " Mon petit Geogotte ! Mon petit Geogotte ! "

She fondled him, kissing his face and long hair, scolding him
for spots of paint on his black tie, and using little endearing ad-
jectives that were a fresh revelation to me of Sarah, the lover,

Clairin showed her a painting in water-colours which he had
done while visiting at Fontainebleau. Taking a crayon, he wrote
on the back : "To the Perfect Woman," and handed it to her.

The next day she chose a little statue she had herself modelled,
and sent it to him, with the inscription : "To my perfect man,
from Sara," spelling her name without the " h," as she sometimes
did.

Clairin presented her with fifteen different paintings, all of
which she kept until the end of her life. Five were of herself.

These paintings were : "A Portrait of Alexandre Dumas
fils," signed by both Clairin and Dumas ; " Sarah Bernhardt,
Lecturer "■ — this was done as recently as 1914 ; " Sarah Bernhardt
as Theodora " ; " Portrait of Charles Gounod " ; " View of
Beg-Meil " ; "The Toilet of Cupid " ; "The Fool and the Skull " ;
" The Attack on the Fort by the Blues " ; " Sarah Bernhardt as
Cleopatra " ; " Sarah Bernhardt between Comedy and Tragedy " ;
" Repose on a Rock " ; " The Stairway in the Cliff " ; " The
Virgin of Avila " ; " Sarah Bernhardt as Theroigne de Meri-
court " ; " Characters of Comedy." The last was a sketch in
black-and-white .

These pictures, all of which were signed and dedicated to Sarah
by Clairin, fetched unexpectedly low prices at the Paris sale of
her effects two months after her death. One was sold for as low
as 160 francs — ^then about two guineas — while the highest price,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 211

fifteen hundred francs, was paid for the portrait of Sarah as
Theodora, which was conceded to be one of Clairin's greatest
achievements.

Their romance lasted for several months. Then came the
inevitable rupture, the cause of which nobody knew, and Sarah
left for a tour in America, while Clairin went to a hermit-like
seclusion in his home in the Midi.

When both returned to Paris they were no longer lovers, but
they remained very good friends, and Clairin, until he died shortly
after the Armistice, was one of the most devoted of the little court
surrounding Sarah.

He was frequently a visitor at her house, and in his old age
spent a few weeks of every year at her property at Belle Isle,
off the coast of Brittany.

Clairin was a year older than Sarah Bernhardt. He possessed
a nature very similar to hers.

212 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XX

The publication of Sarah's book " Dans les Nuages," which was
at once a defence of her actions, a scornful reply to her critics and
a picturesque description of her flight in the balloon, brought down
on her head still more criticism, and still further admonishment
from M. Perrin, the director of the Comedie Fran9aise.

But now she lived a monarch in a little world apart. Her
art while on the stage was such that even her sternest opponents
were obliged to hold their tongues in reluctant admiration, while
she now openly maintained the right to live her private life as
she pleased. Every protest from Perrin brought forth the haughty
reply that if he was dissatisfied she was perfectly willing to leave
the Comedie Frangaise for ever. What made him powerless in
any struggle with her was the fact that the Comedie was a
government institution, and that Sarah had friends in very high
places.

She was a striking figure of a woman, as I remember her at
this epoch.

Her extreme slenderness, accentuated by the exaggerated
lacing of the clothes she wore, contrived to give her the impression
of height ; whereas she was in reality no taller than the normal
person. Her complexion was naturally pale from her anaemia —
a malady which had persisted — but, not content with the effect
thus achieved, she must needs paint her face a chalk white,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 213

relieved only by the slender etching of her widely-separated eye-
brows, and by a pair of cleverly-reddened lips. Her forehead
was high and arched, and her hair was the same riotous and tangled
mass of crinkled confusion which had made her remarkable as a
child. Her eyes were the singularly lovely blue of the clear
sky just after the dawn — light -coloured, but seemingly of illimit-
able depth.

When she was serious, they would be downcast, shielded by
long, curving lashes, mysterious and almost oriental in their
pensive languor. When she was interested, they would snap into
life with an extraordinary vivacity and play of expression ;
when she was angry, which was often enough, actual sparks of
blue fire seemed to dart from eyes that had miraculously grown
into two large, burning pools of wrath. No man I ever saw,
except Damala, ever long withstood the challenge of those eyes
when Sarah, wistful and imperious, desired to have her way.

After an interview with her and an ineffectual attempt to
discipline his wilful star, Perrin invariably ended his lecture
by throwing up his hands, uttering a short word of mingled sup-
plication and terror, and escaping into an inner ofhce.

Sarah was a supreme conversationalist. I never knew anyone
her match in ordinary talk. She could be eloquent on fifty
current topics, and had something original and interesting to
say about all of them. The fact that she could hold such men as
Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas fils, Georges Clairin, Gustave Dore,
and others like them, enthralled by the sheer power of her person-
aUty as partly expressed by her skill in conversation, is proof
enough of her many-sided genius.

She was the first great feminine adherent to the capricious

214 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

cult of " je m'en fichisme," which is best interpreted as an abso-
lute disregard of convention and an existence studiousty carried
along the lines of " the individual before the crowd."

Sarah was beautiful ; she was brilliant. She was a genius ; she
was a hard-worker ; she was prodigious in her handling of men —
she seldom had less than a dozen famous ones around her — and
her charm, as well as her antipathetic side, was due to her sublime
belief in herself above everything and everybody.

Perrin, Got and other theatrical celebrities used to beg and
plead with her to dress in quieter and less conspicuous ways
which would be more in conformity with the fashion.

"La mode!" she exclaimed indifferently. " Je m'en fiche
de la mode ! Let fashion follow me ! "

And frequently fashion did. Sarah was thin, narrow-chested,
bony in places and walked with a stride. The fashion was for
plump women, of rounded and gracious line. Sarah remained
totally indifferent to the fashion, and within a few years she found
herself a leader of the mode, with plumpness and bouffonerie beating
a protesting retreat.

When she was forty, her arms had grown so thin that they had
to be concealed, even with evening dress, so she invented the
shoulder-length glove, which immediately jumped into fashion.

She launched several kinds of corsets, one of which still bears
her name. Her footwear was seized on and copied extensively.
She was the first woman in France to wear high leather buttoned
boots with an ordinary street dress.

She was the first woman to bid her dressmaker insert jewels
in her slippers. She was the first woman to wear ostrich plumes
as an ornament to her evening coiffure. She was the first woman

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 215

audaciously to defy convention, and receive her friends in her
painter's garb of silken pyjamas !

She did this, she did that, she did anything she pleased.
Whenever anybody started a great outcry against her, others would
shrug their shoulders and exclaim, " Mais, c'est Sarah I " She was
Sarah. That was answer enough. If ever a woman in France has
been a law unto herself, it was Sarah at that time — a whole lexicon
of law, in fact.

Naturally, she got into numerous scrapes. She was thrice
sued for debt, as a result of her lavish expenditure during the
building of her house in the rue Fortuny. Whenever she saw
anything she liked, she could not rest until she had acquired it.
Her salary at the Comedie was only 20,000 francs a year^ — only
£800, even at that time^yet with this, and the small sums left
her by her father and by several relatives, she managed to live
in a style and with an ostentation surpassed by but few persons
of her age.

The furniture in her house had been acquired absolutely
regardless of cost, and a lot of it was taken away again when she
did not pay for it. Dealers were glad to sell things to her, and to
take their money as and when she paid them, for the fact that
Sarah Bernhardt had bought an article was certain to start a fad
for it.

Her dresses, her hats and her shoes never cost her anything.
In later years I even heard it stated that her dressmaker actually
paid her to wear his creations ! It was a triumph for any dealer
to be able to say, " Sarah Bernhardt bought one like that," or,
" Sarah Bernhardt was wearing one like that yesterday," or,
" Sarah Bernhardt has one in her dining-room."

2i6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

The mural decorations and the works of art in her house,
fortunately, did not cost Sarah anything. They were mostly
gifts of such great friends as Georges Clairin, Louise Abbema —
of whose paintings, when she died, Sarah possessed more than
eighty — Sir Edward Burne- Jones — ^who had been caught in the
siege of Paris, and had then met and fallen captive to Sarah —
Ernest Duez, Theodore Fantin-Latour, Maxime Guyon, Hector
Giacomelli, Rene Raoul Griffon, Graham Robertson, Luc Olivier
Merson, Germain Fabien Brest, John Lewis Brown, Robert
Fleury, Vastagh Gezah, Alfred Stevens, and many other great
and famous artists of the brush.

Most of the above-mentioned persons frequented her house.
I have seen a dozen famous painters and six or seven great authors
aU listening to Sarah together — and finding joy in it. She ruled
her little court with a rod of iron, but she wrapped the rod in
silk. Victor Hugo, watching her at work in her studio on one
occasion, said :

" Ah ! madame, how I wish I could paint ! "

" But you can ! " replied Sarah.

"No," said Hugo.

" Tu es ridicule!" responded Sarah. "Anyone who can
write or who can act can paint if he tries ! "

Then and there Sarah constituted herself his teacher, with the
result that Hugo became an extremely creditable artist, chiefly
with pen-and-ink. His chief delight was in sketching-tours,
which he undertook with Sarah during her rare holidays' — tours
in which Clairin and Dore would generally also take part. It was
a novel and extraordinary sight to see these three wonderful
men and this single eccentric woman set forth together on foot

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 217

from the gates of Paris, huge sketch-books under their
arms.

But things were fast approaching their inevitable climax
at the Comedie Frangaise.

Perrin and his committee had entered into a contract with
Messrs. John Hollingshead and Mayer for a six weeks' French
repertory season at the Gaiety Theatre in London. The contract
called for the appearance in the English capital of most of the
stars of the Comedie, including Sarah Bernhardt, Sophie
Croizette, Marie Lloyd, Mounet-Sully, Coquelin and Got.

Sarah was afire with excitement at the idea of playing before
a foreign audience, but a difficulty that seemed insurmountable
presented itself.

Sarah was still only a part societaire. An actress enters the
Comedie as a debutante, or kind of apprentice. Unless she has
extraordinary ^alent and still more extraordinary luck, she is likely
to remain in this decidedly inferior position, both as regards rank
and salary, for several years. Then, by decree of the committee,
endorsed by the Minister of Fine Arts, she is made a part member,
with half or two-thirds of the salary of a full member. Sometimes
an actress remained at the Comedie twenty or twenty-five years
without being made a full member. Sarah had been there nearly
eight years. The salary of a full member was thirty thousand
francs a year ; Sarah was receiving twenty thousand.

The difficulty arose not so much from the question of salary,
however, as from the fact that Sarah Bernhardt would be playing
in a foreign capital, and would be in an inferior position as regards
the billing and the programmes. The custom of the Comedie
was strict in this regard : the name of the oldest societaire in

2i8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

rank appeared first on the programme, regardless of the role
she played. This was understood in Paris ; it might easily be
misunderstood in London,

" If," insisted Sarah, " I go to London, it must be as a full
member, with a full member's privileges and emoluments."

There was an immediate rebellion in the committee.

" We have had enough of her caprices ! " cried Perrin. " Let
her remain here, if she wants to ! I will not consent to her
demands ! "

Nothing in Sarah's contract, it appeared, obliged her to travel
abroad. So it was settled that she should not go.

Then Hollingshead and Mayer threw another bombshell into
the excited and harassed committee of the Comedie Fran9aise.
If Sarah Bernhardt was not coming, they said, they did not want
the troupe at all, and they hereby cancelled the contract !

The end of it was that Sarah obtained her full membership,
as did Croizette, and the whole troupe embarked for London.
The first man to greet her as she stepped ashore in England was
Oscar Wilde. He became a great friend of Sarah's some years
later — a friendship that only ceased with his downfall.

Sarah's first visit to London was not the triumph which she
had anticipated, though she had her share of the laurels. Her
lodgings at ']'], Chester Square which were procured for her by
William Jarrett, the impresario who later managed her tour of
America, were crowded with celebrities, but they came out of
curiosity and not to pay homage.

Stories of her eccentricities had long been printed in England.
She was looked upon as a wild woman, and her morals were much
discussed and severely commented upon in staid London society.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 219

Everything she did in London during this first visit evoked hostile
comment. The papers praised her performances, but criticised
her sensational appearances in society, into which she was intro-
duced by Lady Dudley.

Queen Victoria vetoed a suggestion that she should play
in a State performance at Court. The Prince and Princess of
Wales were not in London on this first occasion, and their tolerant
influence did not make itself felt.

Still, there was nothing definite against Sarah, except gossip,
and so much was admitted everywhere. All fashionable London
fell captive to her art on the stage of the Gaiety. The Times
acclaimed her as the greatest emotional actress ever seen on an
English stage. She made her London dehut in the second act of
Phedre, into which she put so much of herself that after the
performance she fainted from exhaustion and had to be carried
home. " Such a scene of enthusiasm," wrote the Standard,
" has rarely and perhaps never been witnessed in an English
theatre."

Meanwhile, a tremendous campaign was going on against her
in the Paris newspapers. They said that by her eccentric actions
she had disgraced the Comedie Frangaise abroad, and brought
dishonour on her country. It was a despicable campaign, and was
founded on practically nothing. But her enemies in Paris were
determined to make hay while the cat was away, if I may be
pardoned for mixing up two proverbs.

Gladstone, who was much struck by the charming and emo-
tional French actress, introduced her to King Leopold of Belgium,
who fell an utter slave to her beauty. She was seen with the
Belgian monarch everywhere, and, as Leopold enjoyed probably

220 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

the worst reputation of any prince in Europe, the fact that he was
obviously enamoured of Sarah did not enhance her reputation.

This incident, in fact, in Republican France, was only an added
cause for dissatisfaction. Leopold was not liked in Paris, and he
was barely tolerated in London ; yet Sarah seemed to find pleasure
in his conversation and amusement in his company. He had, of
course, the entree everywhere, and as often as not he appeared
with Sarah, generally to the secret dismay of his hostess.

There were houses in London at this period where certain
representatives of royalty were looked at askance ; and this
condition of affairs obtained also in many European capitals.
When I was in Moscow I was amazed to find that there were
several aristocratic but untitled families who would not have
dreamed of receiving a Grand Duke into their homes.

One of the rumours that gained particular credit in London
was to the effect that Sarah smoked cigars. She received several
boxes from male admirers !

Another story was that she paraded the streets dressed as
a man. I doubt both of the stories myself — especially that as to
the cigars, for Sarah never smoked at all — ^but they were widely
credited in London, and those of the Paris newspapers that were
hostile to the actress naturally seized on them and reprinted them
with avidity. Editorials were published severely criticising her
conduct, and these finally grew so numerous that Sarah decided
to have done with them once and for all.

She accordingly wrote a letter to Albert Wolff, the director of
the Figaro, announcing that she had decided to resign from the
Comedie Fran9aise.

Nobody believed she would actually resign — she had threatened

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 221

it too many times before' — but her announcement in the Figaro
caused huge excitement. The Minister of Fine Arts telegraphed
personally to Sarah demanding an explanation. Sarah disdained
to reply. The Comedie troupe was recalled from London, and
Sarah was warned not to play for a while, as the public, " after
the things she had done in London," would be sure to hiss her.
She insisted on playing, however, and was given an ovation.
It was another triumph for her personality. But she had the
critics against her en masse.

A few weeks later Perrin refused to postpone the premiere
of L'Aventuriere, in which Sarah was playing Clorinde, despite
her statement that she was physically unable to act. The first
night was a failure. Sarah was unanimously attacked in the
newspapers, and this time, enraged at Perrin, she did
resign.

She wrote her resignation, posted it, and then fled from Paris,
so that no one could call her back. She was gone five weeks, and
nobody knew her address.

When she returned, she found Jarrett waiting for her with a
new contract for London, to be followed by one for America. She
accepted both, and returned to London with her own company.
There the eccentricities of her previous visit were forgiven, and
her triumph was complete until she made the serious mistake of

taking her son to the home of Lord and Lady R , where she

was invited to play.

Lady R 's indignation at Sarah's daring action, though

Sarah herself probably considered it nothing out of the ordinary,
knew no bounds, and she gave secret instructions to her butler.
This functionary advanced before Sarah into the huge ball-room.

222 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

which was crowded with people distinguished in British society,
and solemnly announced :

" Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt and her son ! "
After this she was, of course, unmercifully snubbed, and left
in a rage ten minutes later. This was Sarah Bernhardt 's last
appearance in British society until Queen Victoria, yielding to
the entreaties of the Prince of Wales, lifted the ban and commanded
her to give a performance of La Dame aux Camelias at
Windsor Castle.

But this recognition did not come until many long years
afterwards.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 223

CHAPTER XXI

" Enough of Sarah Bernhardt ! Now that she has finally left
the Comedie Fran9aise, let us forget her ! "

This was the slogan of Sarah's enemies in the year 1880.
And many of her friends thought, with a sigh of relief, that they
were to be spared for a little while, at any rate, the pain of the
extraordinary publicity the actress provoked.

Sarah was now thirty-six years old. Her son, Maurice, had
reached his seventeenth year, and was already causing her a good
deal of trouble, due to her eccentric way of bringing him up.

She was original in her treatment of his childish faults. When
he was six, he persisted in a habit of chewing the tips of his
gloves, and no correction, apparently, could cure him of the habit.
Exasperated, Sarah one day made him take a pair of gloves to
the kitchen, fry them in butter, and eat them ! The cure proved
effective.

I do not intend to devote much of this biography to Maurice
Bernhardt. He is still alive, and I understand he is writing his
own memoirs. It is my opinion, however, that it was not he
himself but Sarah's own conception of the boon of motherhood
which throughout her life was perhaps its outstanding influence.

Maurice was a wilful, headstrong, nervous child ; strong for
his size, and a handful for the various nurses who were engaged
to look after him.

224 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Sarah was stern with him at times, indulgent at others ; and
she educated him to rely upon her, and never once, even in her
old age, did she rely upon him.

When he was twelve, Maurice was already quite a " man
about town," preferring adult companionship and evincing
precocious likes and dislikes. When he was fifteen, Sarah
settled a large sum on him and before he was twenty his income
from her was 60,000 francs annually. She always told her friends
that she did not mind what he did with the money, so long as he
dressed himself properly.

Thus, almost from infancy, Maurice was accustomed to an
amount of luxury that was far in advance of his mother's real
circumstances.

The sole thing on which she insisted was that he should learn
the art of fencing, so as to defend his life in case of a duel. This
art, when once learned, got the youngster into several scrapes,
which cost Sarah a good deal of money.

As a small child Maurice appeared with Sarah on the stage on
one or two occasions, but he evinced no great talent for the theatre.
He also, when a young man, attempted the art of plajrwriting,
assisted by his mother, but met with no greater success. In later
years he tried to persuade his mother to make him general
manager of the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, in her stead. It was
the only thing she ever denied him.

Sarah's various studios and fiats were always filled with
pictures of Maurice at all ages- — many of them being sketches or
paintings by Sarah herself.

So much for Maurice Bernhardt. He was an affectionate son,
and if he has not been exceptionally useful during his long life, it

Sarah Bernhardt in Adrienne Lecouvreur.

p. 224.

I

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 225

is the fault of his haphazard upbringing. He is now a father, a
grandfather, a member of the best Paris clubs, a well-known figure
in baccarat rooms and on race-courses, and he still maintains his
excellent reputation as a swordsman. Sarah died in his arms.

It was in 1880, before she left for her first American tour —
in October of that year — that Sarah Bernhardt first organised a
company of her own. This was placed by her under the paternal
direction of Felix Duquesnel, Sarah's old friend at the Odeon,
and consisted of nine artistes, who had been carefully selected for
the purpose of supporting her on tour. They were Madame Kalb,
Pierre Berton, Mary Jullien, Jeanne Bernhardt, Madame Devoyod,
Jean Dieudonne, L. Talbot, J. Train and myself. I was, of course,
the youngster of the troupe.

Our repertoire at this time consisted of eight plays : Hernani,
Froufrou, La Dame aux Camelias, Le Sphinx, L'Etrangere, La
Princesse George, Adrienne Lecouvreur and Phedre. Let me
now set forth the story of how La Dame aux Camelias, one of
Sarah's greatest triumphs, proved a failure until she brought
her own genius to bear on the play and transformed it into a
masterpiece.

La Dame aux Camelias, as a matter of fact, was in its
original form written by Dumas fils after earnest consultation
with Sarah, It was never played, however, and lay for some
years neglected in a drawer. One day Dumas took it out and
read a few pages of the second act to Sarah, for the purpose of
eliciting her opinion on the piece.

" Let me take it with me ! " she asked, and Dumas gave the
manuscript to her.

A few days later she brought it back to him with a third of

226 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

it crossed out and corrected. New lines had been added to
practically all the important passages, and part of the second act
had been cut out entirely.

" There ! " she told him. " Your play is better like that !
If you will revise it as I have marked the manuscript, I will
play it and make it a success."

" It is I who am the playwright and not you, mademoiselle ! "
he said angrily.

Bernhardt turned on her heel.

" Very well ! " she flung at him over her shoulder ; "a day
will come when you will beg me to produce your play ! "

Dumas refused to be influenced by such criticism, and even-
tually the play was produced, in a small way, at the Comedie,
and then at another theatre, but had no success at either. Sarah's
amendments and suggestions had been ignored.

After Sarah had organised her own company, Pierre Berton
one day went to her with the information that Dumas wished to
see her.

" What about ? " asked Sarah.

" About a play called La Dame aux Camelias. We were
reading it together last night and I believe it can be played by
us with success. In fact, it is a play absolutely written for you ! "

" Did you tell Dumas that ? " asked Sarah, grimly.

" Yes."

" What did he say ? "

" He said that he agreed with me."

" And that was all ? "

" That was all — except that he asked that I should bring the
matter to your attention."

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 227

Sarah laughed. " I told Dumas that he would one day beg
me to play this thing for him," she said, " and you may tell him
that if he wants me to, he must do just that — beg ! "

Berton must have taken the message diplomatically to Dumas,
for the next day the latter was announced at Sarah's house,

I was not present at the interview, but at the end of it Sarah
informed us that La Dame aux Camelias was to be included in our
repertoire.

Knowing Sarah's temperament and her obstinacy, I presume
Dumas begged. At any rate, the book of the play, as it was placed
in our hands shortly afterwards, contained all the original cor-
rections which she had made and which Dumas had at first ignored.

We produced La Dame (as it was always called) at Brussels,
whither we had gone on the earnest representations of King
Leopold, who was still greatly enamoured of Sarah.

In Brussels La Dame obtained no success whatever. The
Belgians much preferred Adrienne Lecouvreur and Frou-
frou. It was in the last-named play that Sarah had scored her
biggest success in London, on her second visit as an independent
artiste. Sarcey, who had written what he called " Sarah's
Epitaph " when she left the Comedie, saying that it was " time to
send naughty children to bed," was compelled to make a special
journey to London in order to write reviews of Sarah's extraordin-
ary productions there.

Instead of her light becoming dimmer, it blazed higher and
higher with each month that separated her from her " im-
prisonment " at the Comedie Frangaise.

Yes . . . imprisonment was what Sarah considered it.

" At last I am free and my own mistress," she said. " Perrin

228 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

cannot make me work when I don't want to, and all the critics
can go to the devil ! "

It was predicted that the fine of one hundred thousand francs
imposed on Sarah for breaking her contract with the Comedie
would be a blow from which she would find it hard to
recover.

" We shall hear less of our dear Sarah now ! She will go
away and leave us in peace ! " wrote Paul de St. Victor, her
ancient enemy of the Ruy Bias banquet.

But instead of sinking under the blow, Sarah only worked the
harder. She was absolutely tireless at this period. Her visits
to London and to Brussels were organised chiefly to avoid the
process-servers, who were hammering at the door of her house
in Paris with blue papers ordering her to pay the hundred thousand
francs.

Sarah had not then the money to pay her fine, but for one
full year her creditors could not legally obtain a judgment against
her by default (which would have meant the sacrifice of her house,
and of all its treasures). So after they had made the customary
three visits to her Paris home, had knocked thrice on the door,
and had instituted condemnation proceedings, Sarah returned to
Paris and set about organising a whirlwind tour of the provinces,
to precede her departure for America.

Sarah met the Prince and Princess of Wales at Brussels, and
charmed and was charmed by them. They saw her in Frou-
frou while the guests of the King and Queen of the Belgians.
This was the beginning of a long and precious friendship between
Sarah and the Princess (afterwards Queen Alexandra) which
lasted until Sarah's death.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 229

After Sarah's Brussels visit the Princess — who was by birth
Danish, as everybody knows — obtained for us a Royal command
to perform before the King and Queen of Denmark at Copenhagen.
Five performances only were asked for, and for these Sarah
demanded 120,000 francs and our expenses. The sum was
immediately agreed to,

Sarah did not like Denmark. She was in a bad humour
throughout the visit. We were lent the Royal yacht, on which to
make a trip on the fjords. It was a lovely day and I can hear
still the beautiful voices of the Upsal Choir, blending so perfectly
with the grandeur of the landscape.

Vicomte de Bondy, an attach^ then at the French Legation,
met us on the trip and begged me to introduce him to Sarah.
I agreed, but when we approached her we were dismayed to hear
her giving her opinion of the country to a friend, in no uncertain
terms.

" Je m'enfiche de leur pays! lis m' emb Stent ! " she cried.
The nearest translation to this, in English slang, would be :
" I'm fed up with their country ! They bore me to death ! "
Only the language was a trifle stronger !

When these phrases reached our ears the Vicomte stopped
suddenly. Then he raised his hat, and turned on his
heel.

" I do not think I want to meet your Sarah ! " he said shortly,
and forthwith he disappeared from our party.

I recounted the incident to Sarah the next day, as we
sat on deck of a steamer which was carrying us back to
France,

230 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" And he was a Frenchman ! " she exclaimed. " Why,
what you heard me say was nothing ! I said a great deal more to
the Crown Prince, and he only laughed ! "

Sarah's freedom of language was at times embarrassing.

Baron Magnus, the then German Minister in Denmark, was
an old inhabitant of Paris, and had known Sarah in the days
before the war. But since 1870 Sarah could not bear to look at
a German.

When the baron got up at a banquet, therefore, and, raising
a glass of champagne, jovially proposed her health, the actress
could not restrain her anger. She sprang to her feet and raised
her glass high in the air, to the astonishment of the King, the Queen
and various other members of the Royal family who were seated
round her^ — and probably, it must be admitted, to their secret
amusement.

" I accept your toast. Monsieur the Minister of Prussia," she
cried, " but only on condition that you extend it to include the
whole of La Belle France ! "

Baron Magnus turned white. He could think of nothing to
say, and he sat down. The band struck up the " Marseillaise "
and then, courteously enough, considering what had passed, he
got on his feet again.

Long afterwards, he and Sarah became very good friends.
But he never tired of telling the story of how Sarah had
startled a King and Queen and humbled an Imperial
Ambassador.

On September 4, 1880, we left Paris on our first tour of the
provinces under Duquesnel's managership. The tour, which
lasted twenty-eight days, was a tremendous success, and in October,

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 231

a few days after our return to Paris, Sarah left for America under
Abbey's management. I did not go with her, my family being
unwilling that I should make the journey before having completed
my studies.

232 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XXII

As I said at the conclusion of the last chapter, I did not accom-
pany Sarah Bernhardt on her first visit to the United States,
and I can therefore give no first-hand impressions of the trip.
What is more, she told me so much when she returned, and so
mixed were her own impressions, that it is hard for me to say now
whether she actually enjoyed her visit to the New World or not.

" What a detestable country ! " she would say sometimes.
" What a marvellous country ! " she would exclaim at others.
Similar mixed conclusions are often brought back from America
by visitors even now.

She adored the scenery, the energy and the extravagance of
the Americans, and she thought the American men perfect' —
aU except the reporters. But she hated the American women —
and she hated most of them until she died.

" Their voices ! " she would exclaim, and shudderingly put
both hands to her ears. " Quelle horreur ! "

When she opened in New York, one of her most expensive
costumes, she told me, was completely ruined by women visiting
her in her dressing-room, who insisted on fondling it and exclaim-
ing over its rich embroidery.

During her visit to London, in the June of the year when she
first went to America, she met Henry Irving.

" They tell me, madame, that you are going to the United
States ? " said Irving.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 233

" Yes," said Sarah. " I must make money, and the Americans
seem to have it all ! " Even at this period that was the generally
accepted idea !

" Madame," said Irving, " what you say saddens me extremely !
America is a country of barbarians ! They know nothing about
the theatre, and yet they presume to dictate to us ! If I were
you I would not go to America, madame ! What you will gain
in doUars, you will lose in heart-throbs at their ignorance of your
art ! "

Irving himself, however, went to America a few years later.

Sarah brought back from the United States six hundred
thousand francs, a variety of animals— including a lynx, which
bit her chambermaid and had to be killed a week after its arrival
in Paris — a profound respect for American enterprise, and the
reputation she had long been hoping to make for La Dame aux
Camelias.

When Alexandre Dumas was told of her intention to play
La Dame in New York he cried disgustedly : " That's it !
Try my play on the barbarians ! "

As a matter of fact. Booth's Theatre, where Sarah opened in
America, was filled on the first night with almost the entire
French colony in New York, which was a considerable one.
Practically the only Americans there were the critics, and a few
wealthy society people who held regular boxes. The play chosen
for the first night was Adrienne Lecouvreur.

The next day Abbey, the impresario, rushed into Sarah's
bedroom' — Sarah usually received her business folk in the morning
while still in bed- — waving a bundle of papers. His face wore th§
Ipok of one stricken by some grievous blow,

234 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Stopping short, he gave Sarah a look of indescribable anguish,
and then sat abruptly down and mopped his face. He could not
speak.

Sarah sat up in bed, fright on her countenance.

" What is it ? What is it ? The theatre has been burned
down, and my costumes are destroyed ? "

" No," said Abbey, " but your reputation is ! "

The American papers, without exception, said that Sarah
Bernhardt was a magnificent actress, but that her rdpertoire
was filled with plays which should never be shown on the American
stage. " They are doubtless considered all right in immoral
Paris," said the Glohe, " but they will certainly only succeed in
disgusting Americans."

And they proceeded to tear poor Adrienne Lecouvreur to
pieces ! A highly improper play, they said, and one which should
never be given in the presence of American women. One paper
seriously advised the police to descend on the theatre, close the
performances, " arrest this woman, and send her back to France."

Sarah was bewildered. She had played Adrienne in Paris,
in London, in Brussels and in Copenhagen, and everywhere it
had been met with tremendous applause. This was her first
experience of American methods.

The fact of the matter was that only one of the critics present
at the opening night knew French, and they gathered quite
wrong impressions from the few words they did understand. The
play, given at full length in a word for word English translation,
would doubtless have been insufferably vulgar. In French, it
was whimsical, delightful in its irony, and entirely free from any-
thing objectionable whatsoever. The American critics, however,

/

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 235

could not understand the subtlety of the lines, and they gathered
their opinions solely from the action.

The manager of the theatre followed Abbey into Sarah's bed-
room. He wore a strained, a hunted look.

" You have seen the newspapers ? " he asked Abbey.

" Yes ! " Consternation was in the eyes of all three.

" What shall we do ? " inquired Abbey, at last.

" There is only one thing to do — we must choose another
repertoire! They will have us arrested soon, if this keeps
up!"

" But that is ridiculous ! " angrily said Sarah. " Never
before in my life have I been so insulted ! I will either play
La Dame aux Camelias to-night, or I will pack up and return to
France by the next boat ! "

The two men cried out in protest.

" You can't do that ! " said Abbey. " There must be some
way out of the difficulty ! "

" I shall play La Dame aux Camelias to-night, as arranged ! "
said Sarah, as if this was the last word on the subject.

Abbey and the manager of Booth's Theatre took their
departure, after arguing with her for some time, but in vain.

" She will do it ! " said Abbey, with conviction. " When
Sarah Bernhardt m.akes up her mind, heaven and earth cannot
change it."

" But we must do something ! " said the manager, in despair.

" I have it ! " exclaimed Abbey. " We will play La Dame,
but we will call it something else. They will never know the
difference."

When Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the theatre that night, she

236 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

was astounded to see huge red placards outside, announcing that
she would play Camille.

She rushed to Jarrett, the first man she met on the stage.

" What is it, this Camille ? " she exclaimed furiously,
" I know no Camille ! "

" Oh yes, you do," said Jarrett, smiling urbanely. " Cam-
ille is- — La Dame ! "

" Oh ! " cried Sarah, and burst into uncontrollable laughter.

The theatre was packed to the roof, this time with a most
representative crowd of Americans. The publicity of the morn-
ing had done its work. Sarah Bernhardt was playing immoral
pieces ? Well, New York didn't know what to do about it,
but New York decided to go and see for itself.

This sort of theatrical psychology is now a well-understood
thing. Even in Paris, when a revue is not making expenses, they
bribe the police to make a complaint about the immorality of
one of the scenes — and then its success is assured. But it was the
first time such a thing had been known in America,

New York liked Camille — it liked it enormously !

The critics were not fools, though. Every paper announced
the next day that Camille was in reality La Dame aux Camelias,
but with an American name !■

They also said that the play had been forbidden in London
by Queen Victoria, which was true ; and were very severe on
the " prudish Queen " for her " narrow-mindedness." Com-
pletely forgetting their fulminations of only twenty-four hours
before, they said that it was an unthinkable crime that such a
beautiful play should ever have been banned anywhere. It was

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 237

rather " Frenchy," they admitted, but Sarah's magnificent acting
more than made up for that.

Sarah Bernhardt made more than a dozen tours in America,
and Camille was invariably her greatest success there. It
broke all records for receipts in New York City.

The reputation of the play crossed the Atlantic before Sarah
did. Alexandre Dumas did not know whether to be delighted or
dismayed. The " barbarians " had liked his play !

The success of La Dame in America encouraged Sarah to
give it a fair trial in France, and elsewhere in Europe. Even-
tually it became, after Phedre and Le Passant, her greatest
success. Even L'Aiglon — another play which received its
original baptism of success in the United States — could not rival
it in popularity.

All of which may go to show that American audiences have
a better sense of the dramatic than have audiences in Europe —
or it may not !

After witnessing a performance of Le Sphinx, which also
obtained an enormous success in New York, Commodore Vander-
bilt, who was then at the hey-day of his power in New York,
but was not yet accepted in society because of his bluff and hearty
— ^not to say indifferent — manners, was announced to Sarah in
her dressing-room. She had heard of this remarkable man, and
was anxious to meet him. Her account of the conversation, which
took place through an interpreter, was amusing.

" His first words to me " (said Sarah) " were, ' You are a Jewess,
aren't you, madame ? '

" I was offended at his manner, and replied frigidly, ' No,
monsieur, I am a Catholic ! '

238 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" ' That's peculiar,' said Vanderbilt, ' I heard you were a
Jewess. However, it don't matter. I came to present my respects.
You're the only woman who ever made me cry ! '

" I laughed — nobody could resist him. ' Yep, by gorry,'
went on the multi-millionaire, ' you made me cry ! An' I've
taken a box for every night you are billed to play ! ' "

He kept his word. Looking across the footlights, night after
night, throughout twenty-three performances, Sarah never failed
to see Vanderbilt in his box. Every time he saw her looking at
him, he took out a gigantic handkerchief and solemnly wiped his
eyes. When she left New York, he was among those who saw
her off on the boat.

" Ma'am," he said, " I'd like to give you a present. What
would you like the most ? "

Some women, hearing such an avowal from a multi-million-
aire, would have thought of jewels. But Sarah was more original.

" Give me your handkerchief ! " she replied promptly.

Vanderbilt was much taken aback, but took out his handker-
chief and gave it to her.

Sarah thanked him. " I shall keep this always," she told
him, " in memory of the time I made Vanderbilt cry ! "

When she got back to Paris, she had it framed and hung on
the wall of her boudoir, but on one of the several occasions that
her furniture was seized for debt, she lost it, and Vanderbilt
had meanwhile died.

Theodore Roosevelt, then a very young man, was another of
those who met Sarah Bernhardt during her first visit to New York.
He was a firm friend of hers until he died, and invariably visited
her when he was on one of his trips abroad.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 239

A letter from Roosevelt, extolling her genius, was one of the
few she kept and had framed. It hung until the day of her death
in the little ante-chamber outside her bedroom.

In this letter the former President said in one passage :
" I have altered my plans so as to arrive in Paris after you return
from Spain. I could not come to Paris and miss seeing my oldest
and best friend there."

During her tour of America in 1892, Sarah had dinner with
Roosevelt, and she loved to recount the experience to her friends
on her return to Paris.

" An unforgettable character ! " she would say, and then
would add : " Ah, but that man and I, we could rule the world ! "

They came near to doing it, he on one side as President of the
United States, and she, on the other, as the uncrowned Queen of
Paris.

Booth, James Hubbard, James Wilcox and James K. Hackett
were other Americans whom Sarah counted among her warmest
friends. Hackett represented the American stage at her funeral.

It has often been commented upon that Sarah Bernhardt
never had an American lover. I heard her speak of this one day
with regret.

" I am sure the Americans must be great lovers," she said ;
" they are so strong, so primitive, and so childish in their ardoiu.
The English are wonderful men to love, because they possess
the faculty of bending one to their likes, dislikes and moods
without seeming to make it an imposition ; but the Americans
are greater, for they bend themselves to suit you."

This absence of Americans in Sarah's sentimental life is best
explained by the short duration of each of her tours of America

240 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

and the distances covered during them. Many towns in America
saw Sarah only for twenty-four hours, and the whole period was
a ceaseless whirl of arriving, rehearsing, playing and departing.
She was a genius at organisation and insisted on attending to the
larger details of her tours herself.

After three weeks in America, Sarah learned sufficient English
to know the simpler expressions, and before 1895 she spoke it
very well. On her tours in America she invariably travelled by
special train, the " Sarah Bernhardt Special," but this was not
by her own arrangement, and she did not like it.

" They will not put one's special coaches on the fast trains,"
she explained, " and at night they back one's car into a siding,
where one is kept awake by the noise of the goods trains being
made up, shunting, arriving and departing."

On her last two visits to America she did not use either a
special train or a special car, but travelled in drawing-room
sleepers. She said she found it easier and " beaucoup plus
pratique."

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 241

CHAPTER XXIII

Sarah's first tour of the United States and Canada occupied
seven months, during which she visited fourteen states and four
provinces, played in more than fifty theatres and appeared before
the public more than 150 times.

When she returned to France, warships fired salutes, the entire
city of Havre was beflagged and illuminated, and some of the
most distinguished persons in France were on the quay to greet
her.

She had departed an enfant terrible, to use the mot of Sarcey ;
she returned an idol, feverishly acclaimed. Enfin, France was
once more to salute its Sarah !

Never before had any woman become such an entirely national
character. Others had risen to similar artistic greatness —
Rachel was probably as great a tragedienne as was Sarah at this
epoch, and Sarah always declared that never in her life had she
attained the sublime heights of Rachel's art' — but none had become
at the same time a popular figure amongst the masses, to whom
actresses until now had always seemed beings apart.

The theatre has always been a cult in France, much more so
than in any other nation, but in the sixties and seventies it was a
cult practised only by the few who possessed the requisite educa-
tion to understand the difficult verse, the delightful satire, the

242 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

delicate irony of the poets whose work then constituted nine-
tenths of the plays performed. Or, on the other hand, there were
the so-called popular theatres, but these were vulgar burlesques
of what the popular theatre is to-day.

It was Sarah Bernhardt, more than anyone else, who trans-
formed, with her magic touch, the theatre in France from the
superior, intellectual toy of the cultured few to the amusement
and recreation of the many. This she accomplished not only
by her insistence on dramatic values, as much as on literary
excellence — on scenic perfection as much as on the handling of
phrases — but by her own personal genius in finding the " common
touch."

When she returned from the United States, it was to find
preparations being made for her to play Theodora, the new
play by Victorien Sardou, who was just then coming to the fore.
But several other matters intervened.

First, she fell in love with Philippe Garnier, an actor of con-
siderable talent ; secondly, Gamier persuaded her to make a
Grand Tour of Europe ; thirdly, she was introduced to Jules
Paul Damala, who took her away from Garnier and made her his
wife ; fourthly, Victorien Sardou, on the advice of Pierre Berton,
withdrew his offer asking her to play Theodora and suggested
that instead she should play Feodora, an older play by him and
one well-tried by public favour.

These events tumbled one after another into the life of Sarah
Bernhardt, and all had their influence on it.

She first became really intimate with Philippe Garnier at
a banquet given to celebrate her return. I remember that
Sarah gave a demonstration at this banquet of how the

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 243

Americans ate with their knives and fingers, and kept us
all convulsed by her description of American food.

" Mon ami," she said to the actor Decori, who sat next me,
" you would not believe it — the Americans never take more than
a quarter of an hour to dine, and they eat in whichever order the
cook has prepared the dishes. If the fruit is ready, then they eat
that first ! Ugh ! It was terrible ! " She shuddered.

The American cuisine was always one of Sarah's pet abomina-
tions, and on other visits to the United States she was careful to
take her own cook as well as a supply of food, wines and condi-
ments. When Edison invited her in 1890 to one of his country
houses, she is said to have arrived there with a cook of her own
and an entire kitchen staff !

Though Sarah herself liked to make fun of the Americans,
she never allowed anyone else to do so ; and when Dore, who
had visited America, related a humorous anecdote somewhat too
cutting in its sarcasm, Sarah caught him up sharply. Dore
replied with equal acerbity, and it was Garnier who distinguished
himself by leaping into the breach and smoothing down the
ruffled feathers of the two friends.

Sarah noticed him, began an animated conversation with him,
and found him spirituel — in the French sense of the word — ^well-
informed and charming. She invited him to call and see her.

He called frequently, and a week later was made a star
member of Sarah's company. It was Garnier who insisted that
she should exploit the publicity gained from her American tour
by undertaking at once another whirlwind tour of Europe, this
time going as far as Russia.

The prospect appealed to Sarah, but she was tired and not

244 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

over-anxious to undertake the monumental work of organising
such an expedition. So Garnier did this for her, and within two
months had the itinerary completed.

In the meantime Sarah had made a most tragic acquaintance
— that of Damala.

This man was a Greek, of good family, who had originally
been destined for diplomacy, and had come to France to
pursue his studies. In Paris he had rapidly acquired the reputa-
tion of being the " handsomest man in Europe."

He was tall, physically of classic beauty, and with a passionate,
Oriental face, which was dominated by a pair of warm brown
eyes, shielded by lashes of girlish length.

" The ' Diplomat Apollo ' was the name by which he was
jocularly known among his friends ; and jealous husbands and
lovers talked of him as the most dangerous man in Paris.

He had had numerous affairs before he met and fell in love,
after his Oriental fashion, with Sarah Bernhardt. One was with
the wife of Paul Meissonnier, a Parisian banker, whose reputation
he had ruined to the extent of forcing her to leave France.

Another was with the daughter of a Vaucluse magistrate,
who left her parents and a comfortable home to follow Damala
to Paris, where he deserted her when her baby was born. This
girl wrote a book exposing Damala, after he had married Sarah
Bernhardt, but the book was suppressed. I never heard what
became of her. Perhaps the Seine could tell.

Young, beautiful and a dare-devil, Damala, when he met
Bernhardt, was a figure to delight the gods of evil. There was no
vice to which he was not addicted, no evil thing which he would
not attempt. His Oriental parties, at which those taking part

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 245

divested themselves of their clothing and plunged naked into
baths of champagne, were the talk of Paris.

It was inevitable that Bernhardt, the famous actress, and
Damala, the almost equally notorious bon viveur, should eventually
meet. Each knew the reputation of the other, and their curiosity
was only the more whetted thereby.

Each delighted to play with fire, and especially with the
dangerously devastating fire which smoulders eternally within
the human soul.

Bernhardt prided herself on her ability to conquer men, to
reduce them to the level of slaves ; Damala vaunted his ability
as a hunter and a spoiler of women.

No man, said Bernhardt, could long resist her imperious will ;
no woman, said Damala, could long remain impervious to his
fatal charm- — and to prove it he would exhibit with pride the
clattering bones in his closet.

Like grains of mercury in a bowl of sand, their two natures
were inevitably attracted towards each other. Both were serenely
confident of the issue of that coming clash of wills,

Damala boasted to his friends that, as soon as he looked at
her, the great Sarah Bernhardt would be counted on his long list
of victims ; and Bernhardt was no less certain that she had only
to command for Damala to succumb.

She was all woman, feline in her charm and attraction for
men, but herculean in the labour which was in reality the greater
half of her life. Damala was only half a man ; he had the exterior,
the sexual attraction of one, but he lacked the vital power to
live and to endure by the labour of his hands and brain.

He was beautiful and brilliant, but only the shell was left

246 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

of his manhood, which he had burned out years before his time,
for he was younger than Sarah by three years. Sarah, despite
all the marvellous things which she had already accomplished,
had the best of her span of life before her. Damala was indolent,
unambitious except as regards women, hot-headed, quick to take
up an insult, and an unscrupulous fiend when his passions were
aroused. He had the presence and manners of a gentleman and
the mind of a chimpanzee.

Even before he met Sarah, Damala was a victim to the vice
of morphine, and in that curious strata of society which is com-
posed of drug-takers, he met Jeanne Bernhardt, Sarah's sister,
who had no right to the name, but who had assumed it at the
behest of their mother.

Jeanne had succumbed to morphine before she was twenty-five.
She had followed Sarah's footsteps into the theatre, but she had
none of the talent of her great half-sister, nor had she the beauty,
despite her early promise.

She was a peculiar-looking woman, with dark hair, a thin face,
deep green pools for eyes, a weak chin and uncertain mouth.
She could fill a small part in a play, with the aid of Sarah's care-
ful coaching, but she could not be depended upon ; and at times,
under the influence of her special drug, would commit the worst
blunders. On more than one occasion she had almost ruined a
play.

Poor Jeanne ! She had much that was good in her. She loved
Sarah with a passion which was extraordinary, to say the least,
considering the earlier lack of devotion to one another that
characterised the household of Julie Bernard.

That poor lady was now dead, at the age of fifty-one. She

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 247

had lived long enough, however, to see her unwanted child rise
to heights of fame that were almost dizzy, when regarded from
her own comparatively small eminence of beauty and coquette.

The baby she had left to the tender mercies of a concierge's
wife, and all but abandoned ; the thin, delicate child who
had wanted to be a nun, and whom she had never really
imderstood ; that being whom she had created, fruit of perhaps
the only genuine passion of her empty life, had become the
favourite toast of the world, the darling of two hemispheres, with
kings paying homage to her beauty and her art.

It is to be doubted whether Julie ever really understood the
miracle that had happened. It is to be doubted also whether she
ever credited Sarah with the genuine greatness that was hers.
Almost to the day of her death, in fact, she was steadily lamenting
her daughter's extravagances and eccentricities — she, of all women,
whose foibles had once shocked the gayest city in the world !

It takes a strong will and a cool head to survive the fast life
of the theatre, especially when that life is lived as Sarah Bern-
hardt lived it. Though Sarah might appear strong ; though her
constitution, which had once been delicate, might now seem to
be made of spun steel, in reality she was still delicate — extremely
so. It was her will that triumphed, the will to accomplish, to
create, to live — the will which is another name for genius.

But little Jeanne, the centre of her mother's fond hopes, had
neither strength of body nor power of will. She had not genius,
only a facility for mimicry. The life that sustained and ex-
hilarated Sarah, ruined and finally killed her.

Sarah's feeling for Jeanne was the pity which is akin to love,
and not the sisterly devotion she might have felt had her earlier

248 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

history been less unfortunate. She helped the girl all she could,
saw that she had work, and that she was able to earn sufficient
money. She took her to America, in the hope that travel and
the change into a newer, freer atmosphere would work the miracle
she so ardently desired.

Sarah's hatred for drugs was one of the abiding passions of
her life. She herself had such an unquenchable spirit within her
that she could not imagine the plight of those who were compelled
to indulge a fanciful morbidity with such artificial stimulants.

Once, shortly after discovering that her half-sister was taking
morphine, she thrashed Jeanne with a riding- whip and locked her in
her bedroom. There for four days she kept her a prisoner, denying
her both food and drug in an imscientific attempt to tame her
desires, which, of course, ended in failure. Despite all Sarah's
efforts, Jeanne slipped gradually down the hill and into the pit
which is the inevitable fate of those who seek the bliss of this
artificial paradise.

Morphine had come into general use as a medicine during the
war of 1870, and many doctors and soldiers had learned to listen
to its dangerous appeal. They taught its use to their women, and
the alleged miracles worked by the drug became noised abroad.
Its use became almost fashionable !

People who frequented the salons took it shamelessly, just
as anyone else would take a glass of champagne. It was said that
opium dulled your cares and finally made you forget them, but
that morphine kept you conscious of them and actually made you
enjoy them !

Jeanne and Damala were members of a group of morphine-
takers connected with the stage, who made no secret of their

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 249

vice. Damala was a fair amateur actor — it was in this direction
and not diplomacy that his ambitions lay — and delighted to
frequent the coulisses (as the French term the wings), the Green
Room, and the other mysterious haunts which lie behind the
footlights. Many were his victories in this half -world of
pleasure and of work.

When Jeanne spoke of Damala to Sarah, the latter felt herself
repelled and yet fascinated. Outwardly she denounced him, but
inwardly she was enormously interested in this notorious man,
and longed to meet him.

Unconscious of the insidious spell that was at work, enchain-
ing their two destinies, Sarah privately determined to see this
arrogant monster, this darling of the drawing-rooms, this man
who was called the handsomest being since Apollo.

They met finally at the house of a friend who was curious to
see what they would do when brought together.

250 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XXIV

This meeting of Sarah Bernhardt, then the greatest feminine
personality in Europe, and Damala, who was to be the central
figure of the most tragic episode of her life, will remain in my
memory for ever.

They were introduced by a mutual friend.

" Damala ? " said Sarah, raising her eyebrows, and affecting
an ignorance of his name which was in the circumstances really
insulting.

" Bernhardt ? " replied Damala, in similar accents.

It was flint on stone.

" Sir ! " exclaimed the dismayed hostess, " you are addressing
the greatest actress in France ! "

" And I," said Damala, in a sceptically belittling manner, " am
therefore the greatest man in France ! "

Bernhardt shrugged her shoulders at this insolence.

" You do not interest me, monsieur ! " she said, turning away.

" Wait," said Damala, " you have not heard all. I am also
the wickedest man in Paris."

" You sound to me," replied Sarah, " a fool, and the poorest
boaster I have ever met ! " And she left him.

He laughed, and the laughter reached her. It struck straight
at her most vulnerable trait — ^her vanity

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 251

A man had laughed at Sarah Bernhardt ! More, he was laugh-
ing still ! It was incredible !

Yet it was so, and the memory of that laugh, and of the pas-
sage of arms which had preceded it, lingered with her. She was
piqued. For the first time in her experience she had met a man
who would not humble himself before her.

Sarah was now negotiating for the purchase of the Porte
St. Martin theatre, which she proposed to place under the direc-
tion of her young son, Maurice Bernhardt. In this capacity,
as a possible purchaser, she came face to face with Damala, who
had been waiting for her in the theatre.

Sarah would have swept by him, but he stepped in front.

" I have brought you a present ! " he said, and held out a
bouquet of beautiful lilies-of-the-valley — for it was Springtime,
the fete of muguet. This flower is supposed in France to be
a symbol of good fortune, and many a forlorn lover makes up
a quarrel with his sweetheart, on the first of May, by presenting
her with a tiny bundle of muguet.

Sarah looked at him, astonished. Here was a new Damala !

But the Greek quickly disillusioned her.

" I give it to you," he said, " because you will need it — with
me! "

This was even greater insolence than he had shown before.
Sarah was angry, mortified — and interested. Within a week she
confounded her friends by accepting an invitation to dine with
Damala alone.

Although his family in Athens had destined him for the dip-
lomatic service, his own private ambition was to be an actor.
As I have said, he was an amateur comedian of no small merit.

252 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

and when Sarah discovered this she invited him to become a
member of her company.

He accepted at once, but his family intervened and — a curious
case of history repeating itself — had him sent on a diplomatic
mission to Russia, whither young de Lagrenee had gone a few
years before.

Sarah was now all ready to depart on her Grand Tour of
Europe, during which she was to visit all the principal capitals
and was to give performances literally before " all the crowned
heads." In fact, many of those crowned heads were destined before
long seriously to feel her powers of attraction.

She had already included in her itinerary Spain, Italy, Aus-
tria, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It was
an enormous undertaking, having regard to difficulties of transport
at that time, when the train services in many countries were the
worst imaginable. On this tour, I was again included in her
company.

When Damala went to Russia, he begged her to follow, and
as her itinerary included Denmark, it was not difficult for her to
arrange to go from there to Reval, and thence to St. Petersburg.
Russia had always possessed an enormous attraction for her.

Voluminous descriptions of this tour have already been
given, and I shall not therefore say much about it, except as
regards Sarah personally.

In Lisbon, the actor Decor i jumped into the first place in
Sarah's affections, and Decori was extremely jealous of another
actor named Dumeny, because he had a better part in the piece.

During the rehearsals for L'Aveu, however, Decori pre-
tended to be a great friend of Dumeny 's, and carried him off every

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 253

day on fishing trips. As a consequence, Dumeny did not properly
learn his part, and his performance on the opening night was
farcical,

Sarah called him into her dressing-room for an hour, and gave
him one of the most frightful reprimands I have ever heard. It
was devastating. When Dumeny came out, he was pale and
trembling like a leaf.

That night the company were the guests of the well-known
de Rosas at a formal banquet, and one of the hosts proposed a
toast to the French artistes.

Sarah sprang to her feet and pointed a shaking finger at her
unfortunate subordinate Dumeny, who was sitting quietly at one
end of the table with his wife.

" Ah, no ! " she cried, " I will not drink }our toast if it in-
cludes that pig there ! When I play with him, I never have any
applause ! "

There was a dead silence for a few moments, and then Dumeny,
very pale and with tears in his eyes, rose and left the room, followed
by his wife. We drank the toast.

The next day Sarah bore down on Dumeny in the middle of
rehearsals and exclaimed heartily : " Ah, my little cabbage ! " —
and kissed him on the cheek !

In Madrid I was asked to play the part of Nanine in La Dame
aux Camelias. The Theatre de I'Opera at Madrid is an immense
building, and the area at the back of the stage is a perfect wilder-
ness of gangways, passages, and turnings between the different
sets. It was difficult even for the habitues of the theatre to find
their way about. As for myself, I never did learn the quickest
way from one side of the stage to the other, when a scene was

254 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

being played. The distance seemed tremendous, and one was
always tripping over something.

I was supposed to make my exit by one door and to re-appear
at another one, where I was to knock and say a certain line
loudly — I have forgotten the exact words.

I made my exit safely enough, but in running round to the
other door I lost my way, missed my cue, and, rendered nervous
at the prospect of Sarah's wrath, entered without saying the line.
As I did so, Sarah darted a furious look at me, and I realised
that she had already explained my absence in such a way that
my appearance created a comic situation. The audience was
laughing.

In the last act Sarah " died " and it was my duty to pass a
garment over her. This was the first time I had been close to
her since my faux pas of the third act.

Suddenly, as she sank with glazing eyes on her couch, I was
amazed to hear her launch into a perfect stream of low-toned
vituperation, directed at myself.

Her breast heaved, her breath came in short gasps. Sarah
Bernhardt was " dying " in one of the most magnificent scenes she
ever played. Her lips moved — and it is fortunate that the audience
could not hear what they said !

They said, in fact : " You ugly cow ! You have spoiled every-
thing by your clumsiness ! This is not the proper garment ! "

And, in truth, I discovered to my horror that it wasn't !
I was in such a nervous state that I had chosen the wrong robe.
However, I am certain that nobody except Sarah, not even the
others in the company, noticed the fact. But, added to my previous
grave fault, this error was enough for her.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 255

She kept up her great death scene, taking twice as long as usual,
because she kept on thinking of new reproaches to hurl at me.
What reproaches they were, too ! My ears burned. My cheeks
were tingling with indignation.

Finally, when she uttered a really outrageous insult — it was
with her supposedly last breath that she said it- — I leaned down,
and, making the motions of intense and tearful grief, hissed
between my sobs :

" You say another word and I'll smack your face here on the
stage ! "

I meant it, too, and Sarah must have seen that I did, for she
" died " properly this time, and never pronounced another word.

And all this while there was the audience out in the mistiness
beyond, tense and grief-stricken, held by the marvellous acting
of the great tragedienne on her stage death-bed !

In Vienna the Archduke Frederick put one of his palaces at
Sarah's disposal, and in appreciation of his act of courtesy we
gave a special performance for him, to which all the ladies of
the Court were invited. The Emperor was away, or ill — I
forget which.

The last act in La Dame aux Camelias, the very one which
I have just been describing, made such an impression on one of
these ladies, a beautiful Hungarian, that she fainted dead away
and had to be carried out of the theatre.

" Had I been a woman I would have fainted too ! " said the
Archduke, when Sarah expressed her regret at the occurrence.

He gave her an emerald pendant, set in natural gold which had
been obtained from a mine on his estate near Bugany in Hungary.
For a long time Sarah wore this emerald more prominently than

256 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

any other jewel. Finally it went the way of most of her
precious possessions. Sarah gave out that it had been " lost."
Perhaps it had been, but I think I know the man who found it- —
and who paid Sarah handsomely for the privilege !

We were asked to play in Prague, but Sarah had refused to
go there, as she had refused to go to Berlin. A few years later,
in fact, she declined an offer of one million marks to play in Berlin.
" Never among those swine ! " she would say.

Eventually however' — some sixteen years later I believe' —
Sarah appeared in Berlin and secured triumph. Germany, as
I have stated in an earlier chapter, acclaimed her as one of the
Fatherland's own children.

Finally, after returning to France through Switzerland, we
went to Holland, and from there to the Baltic states. We played
in Stockholm, Christiania and Copenhagen. Our greatest recep-
tion was in Stockholm, where Sarah became an idol of the people.
I have always thought that the Swedes understand dramatic art
better than any other nation except the French.

We passed through Finland, but did not play there, Sarah
was anxious to get to St. Petersburg, where a grandiose demon-
stration and welcome, not to mention Damala, awaited her.

Word came that the Tsar was to command a performance in
the Winter Garden, and the whole company was tremendously
excited. None of us had ever seen the Tsar. But so many
stories had reached us about him that, in our imaginations, he
had become a sort of god. Tales of the munificence of his enter-
tainments, the sumptuousness of his Court, the power that he
wielded, had combined to weave about his person a truly romantic
glamour. And we were to play before this mighty personage !

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 257

But Sarah was not thrilled' — at least, not in anticipation of
playing before the Tsar, She might have been, and probably
was, thrilled at the prospect of again meeting Damala, the one
man who had met and vanquished her with her own weapons.

And, when we actually saw the Great White Tsar, we felt the
edge taken off our thrill, too. He was the most insignificant
looking monarch in all Europe !

R

258 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XXV

We made our entry into St. Petersburg under the most pro-
pitious conditions. The sun was smiling, and the effect on
the towers, domes and spires of Russia's wonderful city was
indescribably lovely. The Nevski Prospekt was a never-
to-be-forgotten sight, with its splendid shops, its magnificent
palaces, and its succession of fashionable people in their smart
turnouts.

Rooms had been reserved for us at the Hotel du Nord, but
on arriving there we found that it had not sufficient accommoda-
tion for all of us, so a part of the company, amongst them myself,
went on to the European.

Being extremely tired after the long journey, I went straight
to my room to get some sleep, though it was only four o'clock in
the afternoon. I was awakened by a knock on the door. I lit
the gas, and found that the clock said midnight. Who could
be knocking on the door at that unearthly hour ?

It was a maid, with a message from Hugette Duflos, one of
the women members of the company, who had remained at the
Hotel du Nord.

" Sarah is ill and wants you," the message said.

I dressed at once, and asked the maid whether a conveyance
could be found to take a very young girl in safety through the
streets at night. The maid laughed.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 259

" Oh, yes ! " she answered. " Evidently madame is not
acquainted with our customs ! This is tea-time ! "

" Tea-time ! " At midnight ! I must have looked incredu-
lous, for the maid went on to explain :

" Fashionable people do not rise until twelve o'clock in St.
Petersburg, and the shops and restaurants therefore keep open
very late. When you are having your supper in Paris, we in
Russia are taking our tea ! "

Going out into the brilliantly-lighted streets I saw that she was
right. They were alive with people, and most, if not all, the shops
and of course the restaurants were open. It was a novel scene
that amused and enchanted me.

We arrived in a few minutes at the Hotel du Nord, and there
another surprise awaited me. Sarah Bernhardt herself, accom-
panied by none other than Jacques Damala, advanced to meet
me. Right and left were other members of the company, arriving
in a similar state of bewilderment.

" We are going to have a real Russian party ! " announced
Sarah.

" But — I thought you were ill ? " I said.

" Just an excuse — to get you out of bed, ma petite ! " she said,
to my astonishment. " I knew all of you were so tired that you
would never get up for a mere invitation to a party, so I invented
the excuse that I was ill ! "

Some of the party, especially the men, were very angry and
returned to their beds, after telling Sarah what they thought of
her. Sarah only laughed. I myself felt nervous and annoyed,
and Sarah must have seen this, for she passed her arm round me
and led me to a buffet, where she gave me a little hot tea with

26o Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

cognac and lemon in it. This warmed and strengthened me, and
I decided to stay.

The party kept on till four o'clock, with Sarah and Damala
behaving like two children in their teens. There was a fearfully
fascinating Prince there— Dimitri something, his name was— and
he devoted himself to me, as the youngest and therefore the
most innocent of the party. I was sixteen or seventeen — I
forget which. At any rate, it was all perfectly wonderful to
me.

People kept arriving and departing as casually as they
had come. All St. Petersburg seemed determined to make the
acquaintance of Sarah Bernhardt, and the throng round her
was tremendous, with the result that many who wanted to
talk to her had to content themselves with the other members
of the company.

My Prince was courtesy itself. He was quite young, and very
distinguished-looking ; and I heard it stated that he was related
to the Royal family. But I never found out the exact relation-
ship . . .in fact, Russia was such a whirl for me that I carried
away very few facts and decidedly mixed impressions. Everyone
was charming.

We were feted night after night in the most gorgeous way. The
Grand Duke Michael — I think it was he — opened up his palace,
which looked like a fortress, to us one night and we gave a brief
performance there. After that we danced. Several of the Grand
Dukes were there, and so was my Prince, who presented me to
his wife, a gracious lady with that air of innate breeding which
only the Russians, the English and the Danes seem to possess.
The fact that Prince Dimitri had his wife there did not prevent

Sarah Bernhardt in Les Boufions, 1906.

Photo, Henri MamidJ]

p. 260.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 261

him paying attention to me, and I had a wonderful time. I could
have stayed in Russia for ever.

We did not play in the Winter Palace, but gave a gala per-
formance for their Imperial Majesties at the National Theatre.
It was private, in that no seats were sold and could be obtained
only through invitations sent out by the Court Chamberlain ;
but when we saw the vast throng crowding the theatre it looked
as if all Russia was there. And all wealthy and titled Russia
probably was, for we heard that special trains had been made up
to bring " Sarah Bernhardt sightseers " from Moscow and other
famous cities. We were not to visit Moscow on this trip.

I have heard many people say that anyone who has visited
Russia can talk of nothing else and always longs to return there.
I can testify that this is true in my case ; and I know also that it
was true in the case of Sarah Bernhardt who returned to Russia
three times and always spoke of the land of the Tsars with the
warmest affection and feeling.

I remember a gracious remark made by the Empress, a woman
of no great stature and with evident marks of trouble on her sweet
and modest face. When Sarah was presented and dropped
her curtsey before her, she said :

" I think, my dear, that I should be the one to bow ! "

I thought it one of the most exquisite tributes I had ever
heard.

We played Francois Coppee's Le Passant, La Dame aux
Camelias, Hernani, and L'Aventuriere. The Emperor chose Le
Passant for the Command Performance, and Sarah greatly
appreciated his choice.

" He must be a poet himself ! He looks like one ! " she said.

262 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

This observation came to the Emperor's ears, and after the
command performance was over he came down from his box on to
the stage and shook hands with Sarah warmly.

" You are the most wonderful actress we have ever seen in
Russia, mademoiselle ! " he said, " and one does not need to be a
poet to appreciate you ! "

Alexander II. presented her with a magnificent brooch, set
with diamonds and emeralds, as a remembrance of the occasion.
She " lost " it on one of her trips to South America.

What jewels that woman lost or sold ! The total would have
staggered belief, had it ever become known. I suppose no actress
ever possessed, at varying times, such wonderful jewels as did
Sarah Bernhardt. Yet when her collection of gems was sold by
auction in Paris after her death, most of the articles were found
to be paste, and the whole collection fetched only a few thousand
francs, and that chiefly for sentimental reasons.

Damala and Sarah were seen together everywhere. He took
her about, introduced her into that class of society to which he
belonged by virtue of his official position, and seemed wildly
infatuated with her. Whether it was really infatuation, or simply
the desire to capture the love and be seen in the company of the
most famous woman of her epoch, I shall leave to my readers to
judge.

To me Damala was the most cold-blooded, cynical and worth-
less individual whom I had ever met. I could not bear the sight
of him. His very touch revolted me. And my feelings were
shared by most of the company, so that when Sarah casually
announced one day that Damala had resigned his official position
in order to join her company, we were all more indignant than

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 263

astonished. It had been evident from the first that he meant
leaving St. Petersburg when she did.

What Sarah saw in him I am at a loss to imagine. He was
still extremely handsome — " beautiful " would be a better descrip-
tion. He affected extreme dandyism in dress, and was eccentric
in many of his habits.

He was still coolly nonchalant in his dealings with Sarah and
in this he was wise, for it was this cynical attitude of his, this
disdain of her greatness and success, which had first attracted
her to him and which continued to hold her interest and pique
her curiosity.

Once get a woman curious about a man, to the extent of
wishing to seek his company, and the rest follows as night the
day. . . .

To other people, Damala would praise Sarah wildly.
" She is the sun, the moon and the stars ! "he would exclaim.
" She is Queen of the World ! She is divine ! "

Sometimes these verbal extravagances reached Sarah's ears,
but she never believed he had uttered them ! This was com-
prehensible enough, for when he was with her his attitude was
as different as possible.

On some occasions he actually treated her as an inferior !
He would criticise her dress, her manner of doing her hair, her
acting, her views on any subject, her deportment, her speech.
He was always finding fault with her, and Sarah would fly into the
most frightful rages when he carried his sarcasms too far.

A hundred times she would cast him from her, with stormy
admonitions never to come near her again, a hundred times she
declared violently that she could not bear the sight of him,

264 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

despised him, and refused to take such treatment from anybody,
let alone a " Greek Gypsy." This was her pet piece of invective,
for, as she was aware, it had the merit of piercing Damala's
thick hide. As a matter of fact, Damala was every inch an
aristocrat, even though he was a particularly degenerate one.

In reply to these wild outbreaks on Sarah's part, Damala would
adopt a peculiarly irritating attitude. He would take her at her
word, leave her, and then send a note to the effect that he was glad
to have rid himself at last of such an incubus !

Then he would stay away from her until she came to him
and begged to be forgiven. That was what he wished and liked ;
that was the pleasure his liaison with Sarah Bernhardt gave
him — the idea of a proud and beautiful creature, idolised by
two continents, crawling to him, Damala, on her knees, for
forgiveness !

He would let people know about it, too.

" I had my proud Sarah on her knees last night," he would
say, " but I refused to forgive her ; she has not yet been punished
enough ! "

What a brute the man waS' — but how well he knew women !

The worse he treated her, the more she became his slave.
The more sarcastic he became, the humbler was she. It had from
the first been a struggle between two arrogant natures, and Damala
had woU' — for the time being. There came a day, however,
when his victory seemed empty enough.

St. Petersburg talked much of Sarah's affair with Damala,
as may be supposed. The two were so open about it. The Court,
and the gentle little Empress, were shocked. There were no more
command performances. Russian high society was beginning

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 265

to look askance at this beautiful genius, who was so scornful
of convention.

The code in Russia was that a man could do what he liked. If
his rank was high enough, he could commit murder without losing
caste. But a woman had to walk within a strictly defined circle,
which was drawn by the Empress herself. Once she stepped
beyond that circle she could never get a footing inside it again.
Sarah had stepped outside, and she did not care.

Soon after this we left St. Petersburg, but not before an
incident occurred which will bear relating, even though Sarah
was not directly concerned in it.

We were playing one night when, during the third entr'acte,
I received a message from a call-boy who looked very awed and
yet very important.

" The Grand Duke V — — desires that you will go to his box,"
was the message.

Grand Dukes counted for little in my life and I, a Republican
to the backbone, was vexed at the peremptory fashion in which
the request was framed.

" Tell His Imperial Highness that I am not in the habit of
going to private boxes during a performance ! " I said.

The boy looked a little startled, but took my reply. In a
few minutes he was back.

This time there was no mistaking the character of the
message.

" His Imperial Highness presents his compliments to Mademois-
elle Therese, and wishes to inform her that he will await her for
supper, after the performance."

In consternation I went to see Sarah.

266 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" What shall I do ? " I asked. " I can't go to supper with
the man ! "

" Tell him to go away, then ! " suggested Sarah, who had not
taken much interest in my story. But another member of
the company, who knew Russia well, held up his hands in
horror.

" You can't do that — it would be disobeying a Royal com-
mand ! " he exclaimed. " When a Grand Duke puts a message
in that form, it admits of but one reply. You will have to go to
supper with him ! "

" I won't ! " I replied, obstinately decided.

" Then you will be thrown into prison ! "

" What ! ThrowTi into prison because I refuse to sup with
a Grand Duke ? What a ridiculous idea ! "

" It's true, none the less. These men wield an enormous
power. A mere word from them, and you would disappear and
never be heard of again, and Grand Duke V — • — is the worst
of the lot. You must remember that this is Russia ! "

I was now terribly frightened. I looked for Sarah again, but
she had disappeared.

" What shall I do ? " I inquired of Pierre Berton, who had
always been most kind to me.

" I will go to His Highness and tell him you are ill," he suggested.
But I would not hear of Pierre getting himself into trouble over
me.

So, after the performance, I waited in fear and trembling in
my dressing-room. Several other members of the company
were there also, curious and disturbed as to the outcome, while
Pierre Berton had a positively ferocious expression on his face.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 267

He looked as though he would like to eat all the Grand Dukes in
Russia.

This was the first intimation I had had regarding the true
state of Berton's feelings towards me. His declaration of love and
our marriage did not come until years later.

Finally the Grand Duke came in. He was in full evening
dress, and when seen near at hand appeared a most amiable
gentleman.

He bowed to the company, and when one of the ladies dropped
a curtsey, his eyes twinkled. I was thoroughly frightened, but
when he held out his arm to me, I stepped forward in spite of
myself. He was so thoroughly courteous ! Berton blurted out
something indistinguishable, but fortunately did not interfere
I went out with my Grand Duke.

Well, the story has not the ending the reader may have been
led to expect. The supper was a gay one, but all the men present
behaved themselves quite properly and the Grand Duke was more
like a father to me than a lover. Afterwards, he took me for
a ride in his open barouche, and then accompanied me
home.

At the hotel, when they saw who had brought me back, they
received me with open mouths. It was the Hotel Demouth, a
little place but very smart, opposite the statue of Catherine the
Great. I had moved there because the European was too
noisy.

The manager himself escorted me upstairs to my room and
bowed me in. I had become a personage !

I told Sarah about it the next day, and she complimented
me.

268 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" However," she said, " nothing would have happened to
you if you had not gone ! That same Grand Duke wanted me to
dine with him the other night, and I said I would if I could bring
Damala, and that finished it ! "

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 269

CHAPTER XXVI

Of all the tragic episodes that abounded in the life of Sarah
Bernhardt, her marriage was probably the most tragic.

The one man whom she adored sufficiently to marry
betrayed her love, made her a ridiculous spectacle in the eyes of
her theatrical comrades, ill-treated her to the extent of actual
cruelty, and, after spoiling her life for seven years, died a victim
of morphine.

Nobody knows what caused their decision to marry. I know
only one thing, namely, that not a member of the company was
aware of their intention until a few hours before the actual cere-
mony ; and then only Pierre Berton, Jeanne Bernhardt, Mary
Jullien, and Madame Devoyod were let into the secret.

I was taken ill on the voyage home from Russia and Sarah
thought it best for me to return to France. Thus I did not go on
to London with the company, and joined it only when it returned
through Paris, on its way to Italy.

What I know of Sarah Bernhardt 's marriage is therefore hear-
say— only what Pierre Berton told me. The event must have made
him miserable, poor man ! I am sure he adored Sarah still, although
weary of her caprices.

Berton was a very conscientious and honourable man ; and
his was the restraining influence in the Bernhardt company,
whereby many pitfalls were avoided owing to his sage counsel

270 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Sarah Bernhardt 's once tender feeling for him had changed into
one of extreme respect. She recognised the power of his intellect
and admired his wisdom, and never forsook him, both because he
was a marvellous actor of great drawing power and because he was
a counter-balance in the scales to outweigh her ruinous escapades.

A great many of the company, having very good reason to
hate Damala, desired to leave at once, when Sarah married him ;
and it was Pierre Berton who persuaded them to stay on in
order to support Sarah in the trials which he knew she would
shortly have to endure.

Sarah and Damala may have decided to marry during the
voyage from Russia ; but knowing them both as I did, I am in-
clined to believe the thing was arranged on the spur of the
moment.

One could and can do such things in London. They are
impossible in Paris, where the consent of parents is obligatory,
even in the case of those who are no longer minors, and where at
least a month is always consumed in absurd preliminaries and
red tape.

I firmly believe that, had it been necessary for Sarah to get
married in France, she would never have done it ! Such a
decision, in her case, required to be made and carried out prac-
tically on the spot, while she was under the influence of one of her
fantastic moods. Marriage to her, I am sure, was not the solemn,
semi-religious event that it is in the lives of most women. For
her it was merely another escapade' — the crowning one, if you
like.

Almost everything else on the list of follies she had committed*
Why not marriage ?

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 271

That, at any rate, is the opinion I have always held. But
Berton had a graver conception of the matter.

In his view Sarah was so tremendously infatuated by Damala
that she married him to make him wholly hers. He used
to say :

" She lived in constant terror that Damala's fancy would
change, that some other woman would cross his path, and that
he would leave her.

" She was completely under the fellow's domination. If any
good man, of high and noble principles, had offered Sarah his
name, she would have refused him scornfully ; she would have
answered that she would tie her life to no man's.

" But with Damala it was another matter. It was she who
desired passionately to hold him- — not the reverse. At least, such
is my belief. Sarah too, when she remembered how easily she
had fallen a victim to it herself, was often much perturbed
at seeing how quickly women were captured by Damala's fatal
charm.

" She could think of no way to bind him to her except by
marriage. So, despite her distaste for the orthodox union, she
determined on the ceremony.

" She waited until we got to London, where such things can
be done over-night, and then took advantage of one of Damala's
affectionate spells to persuade him to marry her. He agreed ;
a priest was sent for, and they were married' — all in the space of
a few hours."

Damala always declared this version to be true — that it was
Sarah who proposed to him and not he to her. Moreover, in
fits of temper, he would tell her so before the whole company.

272 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" If I had not been crazy I would not have been caught so
easily ! " he would cry, beating the air with his arms.

By marrying Damala, Sarah thought to bind him to her. It
was the supreme mistake of her life. Instead of keeping him,
she lost him.

She simply exchanged a lover for a husband, and many women
have found to their cost what that means. Sarah's disillusion-
ment came only three weeks later.

Until the marriage, Damala had been more or less faithful to
Sarah — as faithful as a nature like his allowed. But he had
scarcely stepped down from the altar with his bride, than he
began betraying her right and left.

He demanded that she should change her stage name to
" Sarah Damala " in his honour, and when she refused he walked
out of the house and disappeared.

Performances had to be abandoned during the three days he
was away. Sarah was absolutely frantic. She was ready to
believe anything- — that he had deserted her for good, that he
had fallen into the Thames, that he had run away to France, that
he had committed suicide, that he had gone away with another
woman.

This last theory — and Sarah would rather have lost an arm
than that it should have been found true — was the correct one.
Damala, previous to his marriage and unknown to Sarah, had
struck up a friendship with a Norwegian girl whom he had met
on board ship. It was with her that he spent those three days,
scarcely a week after his marriage to Sarah.

Paris, which had gasped at the news of the wedding, was
in spasms of mirth at this new unhappiness which had over-

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 273

taken Sarah. It so perfectly agreed with what everyone had
predicted.

" She is mad ! " said Auguste Dane, the writer, when he heard
of the marriage through a letter that Berton wrote to me. " He
will leave her within a week ! "

I remember the words so well, because they so nearly came
true.

In a few days Damala returned, to find Sarah ill from anxiety
and bruised pride. God knows what his excuses were, what
methods he took to win his pardon ! A woman in love is ever
ready to believe, and Sarah was no exception.

The next day they were together again as usual.

The company went to Ostend, where it played five nights.
On the last night Damala disappeared again, and was heard from
two days later in Brussels, whither he had gone with a pretty
Belgian acquaintance.

He rejoined Sarah in Paris, and Sarah forgave him again.
He would pretend to be ill and win her pity ; and once pity takes
the place of resentment in a woman's heart it is not difficult for
a clever man to obtain everything he wishes.

With every month of their married life, Damala's behaviour
deteriorated. It began to be said of him that he was the most
unfaithful husband in all France, which was saying a good deal.

" I saw Damala at the theatre last night," somebody would
say.

" With Sarah ? "

" Sarah ? No, of course not, imbecile ! Sarah is now his
wife ! "

And so it went on.

274 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Accustomed to facile successes with women, Damala carried
his infidelities to extremes. In almost every town they visited
there was a new betrayal to register ; and Damala now scarcely
took the trouble to conceal his double life from Sarah.

One can imagine the mortification all this caused to such a
proud nature as hers.

From being the idol of two hemispheres she was fast becoming
(as she knew well) the laughing-stock of France ; and the sole
reason for her misfortunes was her insane action in marrying a
man who did not understand even the first principles of honour.
In place of a ring he had given her a cross to bear ; and the
cross was the condescending amusement of the multitudes who,
a few months previously, had been ready to fall down and worship
her as a demi-goddess.

" She cannot be much, after all," said the man in the street.
" See, her husband betrays her right before her eyes ! "

" All those stories about her must have been true ! " thought
the staid and virtuous members of society. " Even her husband
cannot live with her for more than a month ! "

The cruellest fact about mob-psychology is that a mob is
invariably ready to believe the worst. The Parisians now
discovered with in tense satisfaction that their idol's feet were
made of clay.

" C'est le ridicule qui tue," declared a great French essa3nst.
Ridicule was killing Sarah.

Never before had I seen Sarah Bernhardt suffer so fearfully
from the ravages of jealousy, nor did she ever suffer so again.

Her face, within a few short months, lost that girlish look which
had been its greatest charm. Lines came to features that had

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 275

previously been clear of them. She became dispirited ; could not
be consoled ; would sit for hours by herself ; seemed to take little
interest in what was going on about her.

Then Damala would return, like a truant schoolboy ; and, after
the usual scene of anger, all would be well — until the next time.

" Tu esfolle — ilfaut prendre ton parti ! " (" You are foolish' —
you should make up your mind to make the best of it ! ") I told
her repeatedly.

One day at Genoa, Damala and an actress, whom Sarah had
dismissed on suspicion of a liaison with her husband, left the
company and went to Monte Carlo.

Sarah was seized with a frantic fit of jealousy, stopped all
performances (in spite of the tremendous loss this occasioned her);
and wrote letters every hour pleading with Damala to return.

The only reply he made to these overtures was a curt note in
which he informed her that he had lost 80,000 francs gambling
at baccarat, and that if she would send him this money he would
come back at once.

Sarah sent the enormous sum and Damala kept his word.
He returned — but still with the actress !

There was a tremendous scene in the lobby of the Genoese
hotel where we were staying. Sarah's rage was directed against
the woman. She ranted against her, threatened her with every-
thing from physical violence to criminal proceedings, and ended
by ordering her out of the hotel.

" She has come back for the money you owe her ! " said
Damala.

C'etait le comhle ! Sarah went straight into hysterics. But
when she recovered the woman was still there, and, moreover, had

276 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

a legal claim on her for her wages, so that Sarah was forced to
pay.

After this incident she had a respite from matrimonial storms
for several weeks. Her world revolved in and about Damala,
whom (at his own request) she created managing-director of the
company, with his name, as such, billed in large type everywhere.

This request of Damala's was his undoing. It opened Sarah's
eyes as nothing else could have done to the real worthlessness
of the man she had made her husband.

Damala she knew to be congenitally unfaithful, but her
pride could not endure the further discovery that she had married
an incompetent.

As manager of a theatrical company on tour he was a miser-
able failure. He wasted thousands of francs, became tangled in
his accounts, could not handle other people, had no genius what-
ever for organisation. Had it not been for their affection for
Sarah, the members of the company would have voted that it
should be disbanded.

Foolish contracts were made with theatres in strange towns,
hotel arrangements omitted, trains missed, properties lost —
all those incidents occurred which indicate bad management and
which demoralise a company.

To avoid a crash, Sarah allowed her business sense to domi-
nate her other feelings, and there was a welcome return of her
old authoritative character. We greeted with enthusiasm her
domineering ways in place of Damala's blundering and bullying
incompetency.

From Head of the Company, Damala became a mere Prince
Consort.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 277

There was a disgraceful scene when she made her decision
known to him. He called her horrible nameS' — " long-nosed
Jewess " was one of the milder ones.

Then, characteristically, he had his revenge by making open
love to one of Sarah's lesser rivals.

" If a man quit me for a Queen," said Lady Dudley, in the
days of Elizabeth, " then I will be proud, for it will have taken the
Queen to tear him from me ; but if a man quit me for a Duchess,
then am I like to die of shame."

Damala had quit his Queen for a Duchess, and Sarah was " like
to die of shame " ; but she cured herself by writing Damala a
letter, telling him never to return.

Damala did return the next day, however, and in Sarah's
absence carried off several articles of considerable value belong-
ing to her. This happened in Paris after he had played with
her in a piece at the Porte St. Martin theatre, which she
had just purchased.

Damala then returned to his abandoned diplomatic career,
but his habits soon forced him to give up active work.

Despite the fact that she had been born a Jewess and was only
baptised into the Catholic faith, Sarah had strict ideas of a sort
about religion. She refused to divorce Damala, contenting herself
with a semi-legal separation whereby, in return for certain sums
she sent to him monthly, he agreed never to re-enter her life.

Five years later, however, Damala sent a message to Sarah
saying that he was dying in Marseilles and imploring her to forgive
him and take him back.

The strength of the love which she must once have borne him
is shown by the fact that, immediately she received this message,

278 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

she abandoned her performances in Paris, rushed to the bedside
of her husband — whom she found wasted from disease and drugs
— and nursed him back again into some semblance of health.

Damala promised to leave morphine alone and they went on
tour together ; but the drug, to which Jeanne Bernhardt had
already succumbed, proved too strong for him.

Once, at Milan, he was nearly arrested for exhibiting himself
naked at the Hotel de Ville (which is an hotel and not a town hall) .
His body was a mass of sores occasioned by the drug.

I was a member of the company on the famous tour Sarah
made with Damala in Turkey. We played in Constantinople and
Smyrna, and on taking the boat for Cairo we ran into a terrible
storm.

Three times we tried to get into the Bay of Alexandria, and
each time failed. Finally the ship was anchored until calmer
weather came, Sarah was violently sick, and, on recovering,
asked the steward to bring her the delicacies she had had brought
on board for her own special use at table.

These delicacies included several cases of champagne and others
of fruit a.ndpdte defoiegras, of which Sarah was particularly fond.

Imagine her fury when the steward returned with the informa-
tion that Damala had eaten all the fruit and had consumed all
the champagne, and that nothing was left for Sarah except the
regular rough fare of the steamer.

Shortly before his death, Damala was given a part by Sarah
in the play Lena, at the Theatre des Varietes. During the
second performance he was so drunk that he could not say a word.

A few weeks later he died. Sarah was with him until the
last. This was in 1889.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 279

CHAPTER XXVII

Except that those seven fearful years left their inevitable traces
upon her appearance and mind, Sarah's imprudent marriage had
wonderfully little effect upon her after life.

Moreover, she never renounced the name of Damala, which
remained her legal name until she died, though few people knew it.

During the war the fact that she was legally a Greek caused
her much annoyance, and once when there was a danger that
King Constantine might throw his country into the war on the side
of the Germans, she saw herself actually refused a visa to her
passport by an officious nobody in a consular office at Bordeaux.

" But I am Sarah Bernhardt, sir ! " she exclaimed.

" My orders are not to grant visas to Greeks," said the official
stolidly. " This passport is a Greek one and I will not endorse it."

It required a special telegram from the Minister of the Interior
himself before the obstinate clerk could be persuaded to change
his mind.

Sarah wore mourning for Damala for a year, but his death did
not put a stop to her theatrical activities. If anything, she cast
herself into her work with more eagerness than ever.

The seven years of her marriage with Damala had been dis-
tinguished by Sarah's first essay in theatrical management. To-
wards the end of 1882 she acquired the lesseeship of the Ambigu
Theatre — the play-house where, fifteen years earlier, she had

28o Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

been refused a part by Chilly. It was announced that her son,
Maurice Bernhardt, was to be manager.

It is doubtful whether Maurice ever did any active manage-
ment. He had little aptitude for such work, and Sarah was the
supervising genius both at the Ambigu and the other theatres
which she subsequently acquired.

It was at the Ambigu that Sarah launched Jean Richepin.
She mounted his play La Glu, which obtained an enormous
success. She also played Les Meres Ennemies, by Catulle
Mendes.

Exactly on what occasion Sarah Bernhardt and Jean Riche-
pin were brought together I cannot say. I think they had known
each other for a considerable period before their real association
began. Sarah was much attracted to Richepin, who had a
temperament very similar to hers by all accounts.

Richepin's life had been almost as fantastically varied and
adventurous as Sarah's own. He had been born of rich and
influential parents, and educated at the Paris Normal School,
an institution of considerable importance.

He gave many evidences of precocity during his schooldays,
and, after graduating, scandalised his former teachers and school-
mates by impertinently opening up a fried-potato stand just
outside the school gates. It was a way of expressing his
individuality and his scorn of pedantries.

After that he became a vagabond, journeying through the
provinces of France on foot, sometimes begging his bread and
sometimes working at odd trades for it.

Of an extreme suppleness of body and delighting in acro-
batics, he finally obtained a job in a travelling circus, where he

Sarah Bernhardt in her Studio Dress.

p. 280.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 281

was destined to meet the woman whom he afterwards made his
first wife.

From then on he became an actor, unattached to any particular
theatre at first, but gradually taking parts of increasing importance
until he wrote Nana Sahib, in which he played with Sarah Bern-
hardt. This play laid the real foundations of a fortune and
celebrity which to-day are both considerable.

While they were playing together in Nana Sahib, Sarah's great
rival on the stage was Marie Colombier, the friend of the author
Bonnetain.

The whole city was divided into two camps, the Bernhardt
camp and the Colombier camp, and there was tremendous
venom displayed on both sides.

Performances at the theatre in which Marie Colombier was
playing would be enlivened by bands of " Saradoteurs," who,
taking possession of the galleries, would hoot and hiss and whistle
until the curtain was rung down.

The next night there would be, as like as not, a similar scene
in Sarah's theatre, and often the police would be obliged to
interfere to prevent a battle royal between the opposing factions.

Two-thirds of the contents of Sarah's letter-bag consisted of
flowers and presents ; the other third of insulting anonymous
letters.

A score of times Richepin offered to challenge Bonnetain to a
duel on Sarah's behalf, but was dissuaded from doing so.

Finally Bonnetain wrote a book about Sarah, which was signed
by Marie Colombier and entitled " Sarah Barnum." Bamum and
Bailey's Circus was then the greatest attraction of Europe.

None of the names in the book were real, of course, but they

282 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

were so cleverly disguised that everyone in Paris knew for whom
they were intended, though any proof might be impossible.

Sarah had no remedy in the courts, so she took her revenge
in another way. She and Jean Richepin- — at least, the way in
which the book was written certainly greatly resembled Richepin's
well-known style- — wrote and published a volume in reply which
was entitled " Marie Pigeonnier," and in which exactly the same
tactics were followed.

The two books convulsed Paris and the several editions were
quickly exhausted. Sarah's friends bought up " Sarah Barnum,"
and Marie Colombier's friends purchased all they could find of
" Marie Pigeonnier." Sarah herself spent 10,000 francs in
buying up every copy of the " Sarah Barnum " book she could
lay hands on.

A few copies escaped, however, and these can be found in
certain Paris libraries to-day.

They were really very clever books, beautifully written and
full of very effective satire.

Marie Colombier, in " Sarah Barnum," accused Sarah of
drinking too much whisky, and Sarah Bernhardt retorted by
asserting that Marie Pigeonnier delighted in absinthe. It was
an amusing although scarcely polite controversy !

Jean Richepin is now one of the great and respected men of
France. His romantic youth is almost forgotten in the eminent
respectability of his age. He is probably France's most prolific
classic author, and though he quarrelled bitterly with Sarah
Bernhardt, his warm regard for her persisted until her death.

Richepin is one of the most distinguished living members of
the Academie Francaise and of the Institut de France. He

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 283

is credited with having obtained for Sarah Bernhardt the Legion
of Honour, after a long discussion as to whether an actress could
be awarded a distinction which had hitherto been reserved for
men.

Sarah soon abandonded the Ambigu to play at the Vaudeville
in Feodora, a play by Victorien Sardou. This had been arranged
before Sarah left for America. Raymond Deslandes, director
of the Vaudeville, paid her 1,500 francs — sixty pounds — per
performance.

Later on, when Sarah took over the management of the Porte
St. Martin, she made Duquesnel director, and Sardou and Duques-
nel wished her to launch Theodora, another play by Sardou.
Pierre Berton was against the innovation, and urged that Feodora
should again be played. Sarah and Berton were now at daggers
drawn.

" My compliments " (wrote Sardou to my husband at this
time). " You are right about Feodora — that is better than a
new piece, which I know will be a failure.

" But why do you wish Sarah to play Feodora where Gamier
has no part ? It is Sarah, which is to say Gamier, who leads
everything to-day in this lunatic asylum of which Duquesnel
thinks he is the director but of which he is only a pensionnaire."

This is an interesting revelation of Sarah's renewed friend-
ship for Gamier, whose place Damala had usurped a few years
previously.

Sardou's letters to my husband, never before published, throw
a light on the dealings of the great actress with her dramatists.

284 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Here is one showing Sarah's distaste for Berton's persistent
advice :

" MON CHER AMI,

" Je regois une lettre de Sarah, fulminante confre vous,
et qui n'a aucune raison d'etre. Je ne sais pas ce qu'elle s'est
figure et j'insiste sur le mot.- — Car je me suis borne a dire k
Grau que je vous avais vu, et que vous m'aviez dit qu'elle allait
jouer La Dame {La Dame aux Camillas) ddcidement, et que vous
jouiez Gaston — rien de plus ! C'est ce que j'^cris a Sarah, en
lui declarant que sa colere est insensee en ce qui vous concerne.
" En meme temps je lui dis ce que je pense de la Dame dans
ces conditions, et de Duquesnel, qui la force a la jouer et qui
ne voit pas qu'en cela il nuit a tout le monde, a Sarah, k moi, a
Dumas, ! ! et a lui-meme."

After this Sardou had a long and stormy interview with Sarah,
urging her to play Theodora instead of La Dame aux Camelias,
on which she and Duquesnel had decided. It ended in the great
dramatist's defeat, and while his anger was still hot he sat down
and wrote to Berton :

" MON CHER AMI,

" II n'y a rien a faire avec cette folle qui tue la poule
aux ceufs d'or. Je connais ses projects — ^une Maria Padilla
de Mailhac ! ! ! Maria Padilla ! ! Et de Meilhac ! Et une
piece de Dumas ! Elle n'aura ni I'une ni I'autre, et compte
alors se rattraper sur Froufrou. Elle va jouer Froufrou alors
de septembre en mars !

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 285

" EUe est foUe, et plus on veut la tirer de I'affaire plus elle
s'enfonce. Quant a moi j'en suis saoul et ne veux plus entendre
parler d'elle. Si vous avez quelque chose d'utile ci me dire,
venez me voir Dimanche vers quatre heures, car je suis pris
tous les autres jours. Demain je vous aurais bien indique une
heure a Paris, mais je n'aurai pas un moment a moi, et samedi
j'ai conseil municipal.

" Poignee de main,

" V. Sardou."

I give these letters in the original French, partly because
they would lose greatly in translation, and partly because they
have never before been seen in print, and are therefore an interest-
ing contribution to the intimate story of Sarah Bernhardt 's life.

Some phrases in the above are worth noting : " Nothing to
be done with this idiot who is killing the goose that lays the golden
eggs " ; " She is crazy, and the more one tries to save her the
deeper in she sinks " ; " As to me, I am drunk of the whole affair
and don't wish to hear her name again ! "

Previous to the production of Theodora Sardou wrote to
Berton :

" MON CHER AMI,

" II faudrait plusieurs pages comme celle-ci pour vous
mettre au courant des negotiations relatives a Theodora et au
mouvement tournant opere par Sarah. La encore une fois Duques-
nel a recueilli le fruit de son irresolution. II fallait signer avec
Grau le lendemain du jour ou il m'avait dit que c'etait chose
faite. Mais vous connaissez I'homme. Pour ce que vous

286 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

concerne 9a a ete plus simple. Sarah m'a declare qui si vous deviez
jouer Andreas, elle ne jouerait pas Theodora en tournee, et comma
il avait deja fortement question d'y renoncer, vu la certitude
de ne pas la jouer en Belgique et en Russie, la depense du materiel
a transporter etc., etc., la menace ne laissait pas d'avoir un cote
serieux. Cela pouvait se traduire pour moi par une perte d'une
vingtaine de mille francs ; j'ai du capituler, en exigeant toutefois
que si vous jouez Justinien, le tableau du iv acte, qui est a
lui, fut maintenu, condition formelle.

" II est bien entendu avec Bertrand qu'il vous engage pour
I'Eden, et nous avons, in petto, prevu le cas Andreas. Faites-
vous payer. C'est bien le moins qu'on vous dedommage des
sottes humiliations que vous infligent les caprices de cceur de
la grande artiste. J'espere que le vent tournera, dans le cours
de ces neuf mois, et que nous verrons une fois encore Damala
renvoye a I'office. De toute fa9on, ne vous brouillez ni avec,
elle, ni avec Bertrand, en vue I'avenir. Mille bonnes amities

" V. Sardou."

The interesting thing about the above letter is, of course,
the proof that Sarah, during her disagreements with Damala, went
back to Bert on, with whom she subsequently quarrelled after her
reconciliation with Damala.

The phrases which stand out are : " Sarah declares that if
you play Andreas she will refuse to play Theodora on tour . . .
which will mean a loss to me of 20,000 francs ... I was thus
obliged to consent " ; " Make her pay you. It is the least
return they can make for the low humiliations which the
caprices of heart of the great artiste inflict on you." " By all

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 287

means, do not break with Sarah or with Bertrand, because of
the future."

There came a day, however, after he had married me, when
Pierre Berton could no longer stand these humiliations heaped on
him by Sarah. He retired definitely from the stage to devote
himself to dramatisation, his most successful play being Zaza,
which was an enormous success both in England and America.

288 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XXVIII

During the rehearsals of Thdodora at the Porte St. Martin,
Richepin invariably accompanied Sarah Bernhardt to the
theatre. This enraged Victorien Sardou, for it was then and
has since remained a matter of unwritten theatrical law that one
dramatic author should not visit the rehearsals of another's play.

Eventually Sardou made a scene one afternoon in the office
of Duquesnel, the manager. I happened to be present, having
had a previous appointment with Duquesnel.

Beside himself with anger at the slights she was constantly
heaping upon him, Sardou abused Sarah and Richepin, coupling
their names in language of considerable vigour.

Sarah, as it happened, was in an office next to that of Duques-
nel, and heard every word. Bounding forth, she rushed into
Duquesnel's office and cried :

" I have heard all ! You are animals and pigs ! Richepin
is an Hre delicieux ! I will not remain in your odious theatre
another instant ! I refuse to play this pig's piece ! " — indicating
Sardou, who was too much astounded to say a word.

With that she flounced out of the theatre, leaving us in doubt
as to whether the play could continue.

On returning to her house, however, she was met by her maid,
who said to her :

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 289

" Monsieur Richepin has just been here and has taken away
his things. He has left madame a note."

Sarah tore open the note feverishly. A cry of mingled rage
and despair escaped her. It was a note of adieu !

Immediately Sarah sat down at her writing-table and wrote
to Sardou and to Duquesnel :

" My dear friends,

" I have reflected, you are quite right ; Richepin
after all is only the latest of these voyous whom I have put out of
my door. All shall be as you wish.

" Sarah."

It was only later that we learned from Richepin the true
story.

The one and only pantomime that Sarah Bernhardt ever
played in was Pierrot, Assassin, by Richepin.

This was a complete failure and only brought hisses and cat-
calls wherever it was produced, but Sarah insisted on retaining
it on her repertoire so that Richepin could have the authors'
royalties. These were considerable, for Sarah cannily would
only produce the pantomime once in each city, and her name
alone was sufficient to fill the theatre.

She took the thing all over Europe. When we were in

Scandinavia she would tell us that the play was not a success

because : " These Northerners do not understand the art of

pantomime ; it is an art of the South ; you will see how they

will applaud us in the south of France ! "

But when we played in Montpellier, the students were so

T

290 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

indignant that they demolished the interior of the theatre,
and we had to steal out of the city in closed cabs during the night
in order to escape their wrath !

Since that day Pierrot, Assassin has not been played.

All this time she had kept up her friendship with most of the
people who had surrounded her during her years at the Comedie
Fran9aise in the seventies, and among these was Gustave
Dore, the immortal illustrator of the Bible and of Dante's
" Inferno."

Her romance with Gustave Dore was one of the really illumin-
ating episodes of her life.

One night she was playing Clorinde, in L'Aventuriere. Dore,
who was in the audience, was so charmed that he sent her the
next day the original sketches he had made for the Gospel of
St. John, considered among his finest work. In reply, she wrote
to him and asked him to come to her dressing-room after the
performance.

When Dore came, he had scarcely opened the door before she
characteristically threw herself into his arms and kissed him on
both cheeks. Dore was so astounded that, for a moment, he
could not speak. This was the first occasion on which he had
seen Bernhardt at close quarters, and in fact it was the first time
he had ever been behind the scenes of a theatre.

When Dore did not move nor speak, so great was his astonish-
ment, Sarah flew into a temper.

" Ah, you regret, you are sorry you sent me your pictures ! "
she stormed. " You despise me."

Dore threw himself at her feet, and kissed her satin
slippers.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 291

" Madame," he said simply, " I do not permit myself to love
a being so far above me ; I adore ! "

This was not the beginning of their romance, however, for
Sarah was then held in ties of intimacy with Georges Clairin,
Dore's friend.

But Dore joined Sarah's little intimate circle, and after the
death of Damala he ventured to reproach her for abandoning her
painting and sculpture.

" It is because I have no teacher," she said sadly. She had
quarrelled with Clairin, who had gone to live in the Midi.

" Let me accompany you ! " suggested Dore. " I cannot
teach you, but we will teach each other."

Less than a week later it was common gossip in Paris that
Gustave Dore and Sarah Bernhardt experienced a tender passion
for each other. It is questionable, however, whether this was
not a passing passion with Sarah' — although a very genuine one
all the same.

Dore was a handsome man of singularly fine physique. He
was quiet, studious, and in his own field as famous as Sarah in
hers.

He used to work on exquisite miniatures of Sarah, several of
which are now to be found in private collections.

Sarah and he spent one August sketching together in Brittany.
They both wore corduroy trousers and carried easels, and people
who did not know them took them for an old painter and his
apprentice, never dreaming that the " apprentice " was the most
famous actress in France.

Sarah told me of an amusing incident that occurred during
this painting odyssey. They had been walking all day, and dusk

292 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

found them near a farmhouse. Entering, they asked for shelter
for the night.

After dinner Dore was shown to a bedroom, and the painter
supposed that Sarah had been given another. But the next
morning, on looking out of the window, he was amazed to see
her washing herself at the yard pump, her clothes full of stiaw
and filth. She was in a merry mood.

" They took me for your boy pupil, and gave me a bed with the
cow in the bam ! " she told him.

During the first twenty-five years of her career, Sarah Bern-
hardt earned considerably more than ;(^200,ooo. Most of this
was made after she left the Comddie Fran9aise to become her
own manager. At the Porte St. Martin, when she leased it, her
profits were 400,000 francs annually.

But she made her largest sums on tour. Altogether she brought
back from the United States alone considerably more than six
million dollars.

But she was one of the most extravagant women who ever
lived. She nearly always spent more than her income, and, when
she was in debt and besieged by creditors (as often happened)
she would organise another Grand Tour of America, or Australia,
or Brazil, or Europe- — anywhere that promised her sufficit nt money.

This was the real reason for her repeated tours, which made
her internationally famous.

She was still, despite the fact that she was advancing towards
middle age, wonderfully beautiful and full of high spirits.

In fact, these high spirits sometimes translated themselves
into practical jokes, the point of which we might be pardoned
sometimes for not seeing.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 293

When I was a young girl, and none too rich, she saw me with
my shoes sodden from walking in the rain,

" Let me put them to dry," she exclaimed, removing them
gently. Then, in a burst of her peculiar humour, she threw them
in the fire ! And I had to walk home in my stockinged feet.
She promised to buy me another pair of shoes, but I am bound to
say that she never did.

When Catulle Mend^s gave Sarah the principal part in Les
Mhres Ennemies, he was the friend of Augusta Holmes, the cele-
brated composer. They were both poor, and with his first
profits from the piece Mendes bought his friend Zl green
cloth gown, with long sleeves and a high collar.

When Sarah saw the gown she cried : " What ! A fine woman
like you, to hide your arms and shoulders ! How ridiculous ! "

And, seizing a pair of scissors, she cut off both sleeves and
sliced off the collar, while poor Augusta stood by, terrified to death.
The gown now had a square decollete, it wa. true, but it was
completely ruined.

When a male friend came to see her, wearing a tall hat, it was
a delight to Sarah to throw it on the ground and playfully dance
upon it !

She was a trial to all who loved her, and she had tremendous
difficulty in keeping domestics. Despite this, she finally estab-
lished a household which remained with her for most of her later
years.

Her secretary was Piron, formerly of the Opera Comique,
who could play on almost an}^ instrument. Her personal maid
was Dominga, a Buenos Ayres dressmaker, who threw up her
business to follow Sarah. Her valet was Antonio, a Tunisian

;94 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Jew who spoke five languages and who was discovered by Sarah
in far-away Chili. Her butler was Claude, and her dresser was
Felicie.

It was during a performance of Jeanne d'Arc at the Porte
St. Martin, in 1890, a year after Damala's death, that the
accident, which eventually cost her her right leg, happened to
Sarah.

She injured the right knee in falling while on the stage, and
during the resultant illness, which was complicated by phlebitis,
there was much talk of amputation. (This did not come until
1915, however, and for the time being Sarah's limb was saved,
thanks to the genius of the famous Doctor Lucas-Champion-
nihie.)

An American impresario then in Paris (I think it was P. T.
Barnum) went to Sarah and said that he had heard her leg was
to be cut off.

" I offer you 10,000 dollars for your limb for exhibition pur-
poses," was his astounding proposition.

Sarah's reply was to raise her skirts and to display wistfully
the member, which had shrunk a good deal owing to the injury.

" I am afraid that you would lose on your bargain," she said.
" Nobody would believe that that was the leg of Sarah
Bernhardt ! "

In 1887 she made another Grand Tour of Europe, and in the
following year left for a tour of the United States and Canada,
which she repeated in 1889.

At the conclusion of this latter tour she took over the Porte
St. Martin, where she distinguished herself chiefly in the rules

Jeaime d'Arc and Cleopatra.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 295

In 1893 she acquired the management of the Renaissance
Theatre, and in 1894 launched there another great dramatist —
Jules Lemaitre, whose play, Les Rois, she starred in herself, and
in which she obtained a great triumph.

Her friendship with Jules Lemaitre was one of the most abid-
ing and beautiful things in her life. It lasted from those success-
ful days at the Renaissance right up to his death, which occurred
only a few years before her own.

She helped and encouraged him in his dramatic work, appeared
herself in several of his plays, and, in his declining years, invited
him for long months to Belle Isle, her home on the shores of
Brittany.

Jules Lemaitre was the one man with whom she never quar-
relled. His was such a perfect character, so sweet a spirit, that a
dispute with him would have been impossible.

And now Sarah was growing old herself, even though her spirit
was still young. When she produced Les Rois she was just fifty
years old.

It was perhaps because her friendship with Jules Lemaitre
was a spiritual association, rather than a love affair, that it lasted
so long. They adored each other, but their mutual interest lay
in their work together.

Never a play of Lemaitre's was produced or a criticism of his
published which Sarah did not see first ; and never a literary effort
of Sarah's saw print without first having been subjected to the
kindly criticism of Jules Lemaitre.

It was a beautiful chapter in both their lives, and the last
sentimental episode for each. For, after she became fifty years

296 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

old, Sarah Bernhardt became more and more a worker, an apostle
of energy, and less and less the ardent lover.

Her affair with Edmond Rostand was the last great affair of
passion in the life of Sarah Bernhardt.

It merits a chapter to itself.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 29^

CHAPTER XXIX

The first time Sarah Bernhardt 's name was publicly linked with
that of Edmond Rostand was prior to the production of L'Aiglon.

Sarah still pursued her studies as a sculptress, though not so
assiduously as before. Sometimes a whole year would go by
without her putting chisel to stone, and then she would have a
burst of trenchant energy and work furiously on a bust for days
and nights together.

She was possessed of great determination, a trait which is
generally allied to obstinacy, and she was remarkable among her
friends for always finishing anything she started. She might,
in the fits of temper which now were becoming rarer, break her
sculptures or rip up her paintings after she had finished them, but
she invariably completed them first.

She liked to have famous men to pose for her. She seized on
Victorien Sardou, a man of great irritability — as demonstrated
by his letters reproduced in a previous chapter — and compelled
the great dramatist to sit for her twenty-one times, during which
she completed her famous bust of him in black marble. This is
considered by many to have been her finest work.

Occasionally, when people refused to sit for her or pleaded
various excuses, she would trick them into submission. This
was the way she managed to get Edmond Rostand and Maurice
Maeterlinck to pose together.

298 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Rostand and Maeterlinck were friends, and one night they
accepted an invitation to dine at the home of the Countess de

B , the occasion being in honour of the President of the

Republic.

Having some time to spare beforehand, the two men, who were
then not nearly so celebrated as Edmond Rostand was when he
died, or as Maeterlinck is now, called upon Sarah Bernhardt. It
was three o'clock in the afternoon, and the Countess's dinner was
fixed for nine o'clock at night.

Nine o'clock came and passed, and then nine-thirty, and finally
10 p.m. The Countess gave orders for the dinner to be served,
at the same time sending messengers to the homes of the absentees,
to inquire if there had been any accident.

To her astonishment the messengers came back with the news
that nothing had been seen or heard of the two poets since they
had departed, shortly after lunch, to take tea with Madame Sarah
Bernhardt.

Containing her anger, the Countess returned to her guests and
explained that Rostand and Maeterlinck had been unavoidably
detained. Then she privately sent two young guests to Sarah's
house, with strict instructions not to return without finding
out whether the distinguished and errant couple were still there.

They had no sooner reached the portals of Sarah's home than
the grille opened and out came Rostand and Maeterlinck, in a
great hurry.

" The Countess and the President of the Republic have been
waiting for you for three hours ! " cried one of the messengers.

It came out that, during their visit, Sarah had been seized
with one of her modelling fits and had persuaded them to sit to

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 299

her. When it was time for them to go, she had enticed them into
a room she called her studio, which had glass doors, and turned
the key on them there.

When they turned round they perceived Sarah sitting on the
other side of the transparent doors, calmly continuing her
modelling.

They rapped on the door, made faces at her, shouted, all to no
purpose. Sarah went on working with her clay, rounding the
figures into shape.

" But the President is waiting for us ! " cried Rostand finally
through the key-hole.

Sarah's " voice of gold " came sonorously through the door :

" It is a far greater honour, messieurs, to be a prisoner in Sarah
Bernhardt 's hands, than to be a performing lion for the President
of France ! "

Rostand's courtship of Sarah Bernhardt remained one of
the great episodes of his career. Though Sarah refused him
repeatedly, and he afterwards married the famous Rosamonde,
his friendship with the actress continued, and she was at once his
inspiration and his mentor, as well as the co-author of his fame.

Sarah was the first woman invited to see little Maurice Ros-
tand on the day that he was born.

And when Sarah herself lay dying, Rosamonde and this same
boy Maurice were among the last to be admitted to her bed-
chamber.

Rostand used to write Sarah frantic letters, pleading his love
for her. He sang her praises ever5rw^here he went, even in the
cafes on the boulevards where he and his fellow litterateurs were
wont to gather.

300 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

" She is the Queen of Attitude, the Princess of Gesture, the
Lady of Energy," he exclaimed once, in a poem dedicated to
Sarah.

In 1896, after UAiglon was produced, he wrote :

" The existence of Sarah Bernhardt remains the supreme
marvel of the nineteenth century."

As was the case in all her love affairs, except that with Jules
Lemaitre, her high-strung temperament clashed frequently with
that of Rostand, who was a wild and erratic youth.

He was in the habit of meeting Sarah and supping with her
after the theatre. Sometimes they would go for long drives
together, Sarah sitting and listening attentively, while Edmond
declaimed his latest poems.

It was thus she heard for the first time the verse of L'Aiglon,
which he and she created. She would criticise the dramatic
construction of a play, and was no mean authority on verse.
Rostand admitted afterwards that he owed everything to her
shrewd coaching during those midnight drives through the Champs
Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne.

Once he arrived at the stage door of the new Sarah Bernhardt
Theatre- — the old Opera Comique, which Sarah had leased from
the City of Paris- — five minutes late. They had had something
particularly important to talk over in regard to a forthcoming
production, and Sarah could not brook delay.

She left him a short, imperious note stating that she would not
produce his play, since he took so little interest in it, and, moreover,
she did not wish to see him again !

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 301

The next morning, when Sarah left her house to take her
accustomed ride in the Bois, she discovered a haggard figure
sitting on the doorstep.

It was Rostand. He had stayed on the doorstep all night,
hoping by thus humbling himself to be forgiven.

Sarah was struck by his devotion, but more by the fact that
he was shivering with fever. She took him into the house, and
had him put to bed in her private apartment, and for three days
she ministered to him while he recovered from a severe cold.

She would not allow a domestic to approach the bedroom,
even carrying Rostand his food and hot-water bottles with her
own hands. During these three days she did not go near the
theatre — and nobody in Paris knew where Rostand was !

It was during this sickness in Sarah's house that Rostand
conceived (as he admitted afterwards) the first idea for L'Aiglon,
which he composed for and dedicated to Sarah. L'Aiglon, as
everyone knows, is the story of the King of Rome, Napoleon's
son, who dies in exile.

It had a moderate success when Sarah first produced it in her
own theatre at Paris, but was an absolute triumph in London and
New York. In the play Sarah takes the part of the young King
of Rome.

To me she once said : " L'Aiglon is my favourite part. I
think I like it better than Tosca. At any rate, a poet wrote it
with me in mind."

" So did Fran9ois Coppee write Le Passant, with you in
mind ! " I reminded her.

Sarah was wistful. ' ' Yes, that is true, ' ' she answered. " Poor
Fran9ois. He is a genius . . . but— he is not Edmond Rostand ! "

302 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

L'Aiglon was not the first play of Rostand's that Sarah
produced.

In 1896 the door-keeper of the Renaissance came to her with
a worried look.

" There is a wild man outside who wants to see you, madame,"
he said.

" Who is he ? " asked Sarah.

" He said Jean Richepin had sent him' — but I doubt it
myself ; he looks like a savage."

" Send your wild man to me," commanded Sarah, laughingly,
and turning to me explained : " It is this boy Rostand, whom
Jean spoke of. It appears that he is a poet, and quite a good
one."

I made as if to go, but Sarah stayed me. " Wait, we will see
what he looks like ! " she said.

It was thus that I was present at the first meeting between
Sarah Bernhardt and Edmond Rostand.

Sarah had her own fashion of greeting visitors. Her leg
pained her if she used it too much — the phlebitis persisted — so
she would remain seated. When anyone was announced' —
especially a stranger^ — she would hold out her hand with a word of
greeting, bid him sit down, and then cup her chin on her hands
and look at him steadily, without a trace of expression.

Few men there were' — or women either, for that matter —
who could withstand the hypnotic appeal of those glorious blue
eyes, which at fifty retained all the sparkle and fire of youth,
together with the mysterious inscrutability of approaching age !

Sarah received Edmond in her customary manner, with
myself an interested and, secretly, much amused spectator.

Mme. Bernhardt's Sitting-room at her Last Home,
56, Boulevard Pereire, Paris.

Photo, Henri Manuel.] P. 302.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 303

Rostand sat down, placed his hat and gloves on the floor
beside him, and then turned to await Sarah's instructions to
proceed.

I saw then why the door-keeper had called him a " wild man."
His hair was at least five inches long and was in the most in-
describable tangle, as though it had not been brushed for months.
It was matted over his forehead, on which beads of perspiration
were standing.

Rostand turned and looked at Sarah. Sarah, chin on hands,
was steadily staring at him. It was an awkward moment for a
young, aspiring poet !

Tremendously nervous, Rostand moistened his Hps and twice
tried to speak.

(t T 1»

Sarah stared as before

Sarah's expression did not change.

Finally Rostand could stand it no longer. Seizing his hat
and gloves he rose precipitately and dashed from the room with-
out having spoken a word regarding his mission.

Sarah screamed with laughter.

" Eh Men ! " she exclaimed. " So much for our young
poet ! "

But when she went out of the theatre she was met by her
coachman, who was in great agitation.

" If it please, madame," he said, " there is a man sitting in
your carriage, and he won't get out ! "

A man sitting in her carriage ! It was like a pagan mount-
ing the steps of an altar !

304 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Sarah hastened outside. Sure enough, there was her carriage,
and there was a man in it. One look at his mass of hair and Sarah
realised who he was.

It was Rostand !

" Throw him out ! " commanded Sarah, while we stood by
aghast at this sacrilege committed by an unknown poet.

Then Rostand to my amazement found his voice. He stood
up in the carriage and bowed to Sarah.

" I don't wish to have to knock your coachman down a
second time," he said, " so, madame, it will save time if I explain
that I am going to ride home with you ! "

" You are going to ride home with me ! " said Sarah. For
once even her ready wit had forsaken her.

" I came here to read you a poem, and I am going to read it ! "
continued Rostand firmly.

Sarah burst out laughing .

"So be it ! " she cried cheerfully. " Jean told me that I
should hear your poem, and if you cannot read it to me anywhere
except in my carriage, why you may do it there ! "

And she got into the carriage with him, and it drove off —
much to our amusement, of course.

But we were not astonished. Nothing that Sarah Bernhardt
did had the power to astonish us any more.

The poem which Rostand read to Sarah as they drove about
in her carriage — it was the first of a score of similar rides, for
which it established the precedent — was part of his play, La
Princesse Lointaine, one of the sweetest poetical dramas ever
penned.

Sarah produced it six months later and it was a great success.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 305

In fact, it made Rostand as a playwright, and paved the way
for his triumph in L'Aiglon.

He was enormously grateful to Sarah and his gratitude was
the foundation of his love for her.

Sarah's association with the Rostands did not cease with the
death of the great Edmond. When he died he directed that if
ever his famous property, Arnaga, near Biarritz, was sold, Sarah
Bernhardt should be given the first opportunity to acquire it.
But when it finally went under the hammer it was bought by
a South American, and this happened a few weeks after Sarah
died.

When it was first put up for auction there were no bidders,
since the reserve price had been set at two million francs.

" I am too poor even to purchase a lot in a cemetery," Sarah
said at the time, and, in fact, she was at that moment having
difficulties over payments for work on the tomb built for herself
at Belle Isle — a tomb in which she will perhaps never lie because,
five days before her death, the property was sold. There is talk
now that the purchasers, who are transforming the property into a
Bernhardt Museum, will petition that her body may be brought
to its ordained resting-place.

Sarah early recognised the budding genius in the boy Maurice
Rostand, son of Edmond. She encouraged him in every way,
and she returned to the stage after the Great War in order per-
sonally to appear in his La Gloire, which is conceded by critics to
be a masterpiece.

Maurice Rostand is a peculiar individual to look at, and there

are many stories about him ; but there is no doubt about it —

he is Edmond Rostand's son and a worthy successor of his great

U

3o6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

father. Maurice Rostand is a genius. And Sarah Bernhardt
was the first to recognise genius in him, as she had been the first
to recognise it in his father.

Let me read to you what Maurice Rostand wrote the day that
Sarah Bernhardt died :

" Since yesterday, Poesy and her Poets are in mourning. The
muse of Shakespeare and of Musset carries crepe upon his shoulder
of gold ! Phedre has died a second time ! And a poet feels in
the shadows about him a thousand wounded heroines who cry ;
and their immortal verses, like useless bees, search in vain for lips
whereon to rest !

" Permit me, however, to render homage to Her who has taken
with her to a radiant tomb all the lyricism of an epoch ! Permit
me to render homage to the living poesy of Sarah Bernhardt !

" Yes, she herself was the theatre poetique ! The heroes of
poets, on the dangerous road of the centuries are in danger of
succumbing, and more than one disincarnated heroine would not
reach the far country without the helping hand of genius such as
Hers.

" To affirm their existence, it is necessary from time to time
that a heart of fire and passion cause their passions and their
pains to live again. Lorenzaccio, the young debauche, for
having one night taken this voice of crystal, is launched to more
than eternity ! The sister of Ariane and her great sob of
hete divine fills the world more profoundly.

" The Poets are not so niggardly that they do not recognise to
what horizons a voice like that can hurl their songs. You knew it,
Musset? You knew it, my father ! . . . Thou knowestit,my heart.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 307

" I write on the first midnight of her death, her first glacial
night, when shaken by Her I have contracted from her passage
an insulation which is the proof itself of her astra. This insulation
the whole of an epoch has received, and the trace of her
passage has glorified the poets, even when she was not saying their
verse. The beauty and the genius of Sarah Bernhardt made
the shadow of Herself penetrate into all the arts she epitomised.
Who knows in what measure the genius of Gabriele d'Annunzio
has not warmed itself at that Great Flame ? I have recognised
in more than one of these sisters of voluptuousness and of fever
She who was Divinity in La Ville Morte ! One finds her every-
where. Here in a poem by Swinburne ; there in prose by Wilde,
in an arabesque by Beardsley, in a motif by Claude Debussy, in a
song of Maeterlinck. . . .

" Burn, immortal tapers, before her great Memory ! "

Who shall say that this was not the voice of Edmond Rostand,
living again through the charmed pen of his son ?

3o8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

CHAPTER XXX

Sarah signed the lease with the civic authorities of Paris to run
the Theatre de I'Opera Comique, on the Place du Chatelet, in
November, 1898. She immediately changed the name to Theatre
Sarah Bernhardt, and on January 18, 1899, she opened it with
Adrienne Lecouvreur.

This was a curtain-raiser, so to speak, and it soon gave place
to L'Aiglon, which has been consistently included in that theatre's
repertoire ever since.

By a singular irony of coincidence L'Aiglon was being played
at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt on that sad night, the twenty-
sixth of March, 1923, when the world of art and drama was
thrown into mourning by her death.

It was at the Theatre de I'Opera Comique, it will be remem-
bered, where Sarah saw her first play as a little girl. And it was
there that she played her last.

Although it was to be nearly a quarter of a century before the
final curtain fell, Sarah found her energy, though not her fortitude,
diminishing. Further and further her sentimental life was being
pushed into the background, as the cares of business and of
management weighed on her.

She moved to a little red-brown house on the Boulevard
Pereire, and there at last, after all her wanderings amongst the
different quarters of Paris, she found a permanent home. Into

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 309

it she brought the accumulated treasures of a lifetime spent in
travel, including gifts that had come to her from every corner of
the globe.

She installed herself in this house alone with a secretary,
for her son was married now and living in a street near-by, in a
home of his own.

Here also she brought the waiter Claude, who loved to call
himself " I'ecuyer de Sarah Bernhardt," or " Sarah Bernhardt 's
butler," and Felicie, her maid.

Sarah was very particular over her table. She insisted on
the best. Although she herself ate frugally, her guests were
always given the choicest that could be procured.

Sarah was a vegetarian— she remained so, in fact, all her life
although on one or two occasions perhaps she may have pecked
at a bird, a slice of venison, or a similar dainty.

In the morning, at eight o'clock, she would partake of an
orange, a light roll, and drink a cup of weak tea. The orange-
for-breakfast habit she acquired in America, where fruit
customarily precedes the first meal of the day.

Then she would work until noon, when she would be served
with her only real meal— an omelette, perhaps, and a piece of fish,
and more fruit. Until she was thirty-four she never tasted cheese
—it offended, she said, her esthetic sense '.—but when she grew
old, a light gruyere or a Pont-1'Eveque was a favourite dish of hers.

At five in the afternoon she had an invariable glass of cham-
pagne, and at seven an ceuf souffle or something similarly light.
For years her diet was prescribed by doctors, and never a week
went by after 1890 that Sarah Bernhardt was not examined by a
physician.

310 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Despite the accident to her leg and the subsequent phlebitis,
which grew more serious with every recurrent attack, Sarah con-
tinued to act in the plays she produced at the Theatre Sarah
Bernhardt. One after another she produced L'Aiglon, Hamlet,
La Sorciere, Le Proces de Jeanne d'Arc, La Belle au Bois Dormant,
La Beffa, La Courtisane de Corinthe, Lucrece Borgia, Les Bouffons,
and Jeanne Doree.

Thrice, after she opened her theatre, she undertook long,
fatiguing tours of America and Europe, and once she went to
Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. " Bernhardt 's Circus "
was what her travelling company was facetiously nicknamed
by the Paris press — the fun and criticism of which, however, had
grown considerate and kindly.

" Sarah Bernhardt is a national institution ; to criticise her
is like criticising the Tomb of Napoleon," said Le Journal des
De'bats one evening.

The Prince of Wales, who was shortly to become King Edward
VII., was a warm friend of Sarah Bernhardt, and on one well-
remembered occasion paid an informal visit, together with the
Princess of Wales, to her home in Paris.

" What did you talk about ? " I asked, the next day.

" Dogs and dresses," said Sarah promptly.

" The Prince," she continued, " is tremendously interested
in dogs, and there we have a common ground."

Once the Prince called on Sarah in her dressing-room — this
was when she was at the Renaissance.

Word was sent in advance, of course, that he was coming — and
she was requested to be ready to receive him at ten o'clock. At
that hour she was customarily on the stage, and her entourage

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 311

was excited at the possibility of her not being there to receive the
Royal visitor.

The stage-manager suggested advancing the time of the whole
piece, so that the third act would be finished by ten, but this did
not suit Sarah, who knew that such an arrangement would make
many people who had purchased seats miss a part of the first act.

She settled it in her own characteristic fashion.

" Let him wait," she said. " After all, he isn't King
yet ! "

At ten o'clock — punctuality is the politeness of kings — the
Prince arrived. When Sarah returned, she found him in the
wings, watching the life behind the scenes with intense interest.
It being draughty there, he had not removed his hat.

He advanced his hand, but Sarah kept hers at her side. She
was in one of her haughty moods that evening.

" A King may wear his crown, but a Prince must remove his
hat in the presence of a lady," she said loftily.

The Prince snatched his silk hat from his head, blushed deeply,
and murmured a confused apology. It was probably the one
occasion in his life when a woman treated him with such scant
consideration for his Royal dignity !

After the famous dinner " en famille " given to the Prince and
Princess of Wales by Sarah^ — it was supposed to be strictly secret,
but Sarah saw that it leaked into the papers ! — she received a
note from one of the ladies-in-waiting to the Princess, who, with
her Royal husband, was living at the Hotel Bristol in the Place
Vendome.

" Her Royal Highness was much interested in the gown which
Madame Bernhardt was describing to her last night, and wonders

312 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

whether Madame Bernhardt could spare her a few minutes this
morning to consult with her regarding it."

Truly a strange message to be sent by a Princess to an actress !

Sarah visited the hotel and had another long chat with the
Princess, whose beauty and grace were the talk of Paris. They
talked of a good deal besides dresses. The Princess loved to
speak of her beloved Denmark, which Sarah knew well, and they
recalled the first occasion on which Sarah went there, just after
she left the Comedie Fran9aise, when the Princess was also visiting
her native country.

Sarah gave the Prince a Swiss shepherd-dog, and he, after
becoming King Edward VII., sent her an Airedale puppy. This
puppy came to an unfortunate end shortly afterwards. It died
in agony as the result of being bitten by Sarah's pet panther?^

After he came to the throne. King Edward VII. and Queen
Alexandra invariably " commanded " a performance whenever
Sarah was in London. It might be at Windsor, or at Sandring-
ham, or in London, but afterwards the kindly King and the lovely
Queen of England would carry Sarah off for a confidential chat in
the homelike atmosphere of their private apartments.

Sarah had hundreds of reminiscences to relate regarding her
two Royal friends. How she loved Queen Alexandra !

In 1904 Sarah had another and severe attack of phlebitis
while on tour in America, and lay ill for a long time in San Fran-
cisco. It was thought then that she would eventually lose her
limb The poison was gradually creeping upwards, and she could
not put her foot to the ground without intense pain. She
remained a fortnight in bed, with her leg held up by a pulley.

Sarah's fortitude throughout her long trial was amazing.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 313

As soon as her foot became sufficiently well to stand upon, she
insisted on returning to the theatre.

Finally, when she was playing in Bordeaux in the early spring
of 1915 she had another and more critical attack, and was taken
to Dr. Moure's private clinic.

Dr. Pozzi, the famous surgeon, was sent for from Paris, but
after examination he shook his head.

" Amputation cannot save her," he said, and he refused to
undertake the operation.

Another doctor was sent for. Dr. Denucce, also a great surgeon.
Dr. Denucce put the situation squarely before the actress.

" There is one hope for you — amputation — but it is a chance in
a thousand, for the infection has reached the spine," he told her.

Sarah heard her sentence calmly.

"Cut it off ! " she said.

When they laid her on the operating table, they tried to cheer
her with words of encouragement, but Sarah's brave smile shone
wanly.

" I have already faced death seven times," she said. " If
this is when my light is to go out, I shall not be afraid ! "

She was in a terrible condition, not only physically but
financially. The operation was a success, but she had not a cent
with which to pay the clinic or the doctors. The Rothschilds
and their friends finally came to the rescue.

" All my life, it seems, I have been making money for others
to spend ! " she said, but with no complaint in her voice.

She faced her future then, penniless after the millions she
had earned, and with one leg, as courageously as she had returned
to face a jeering Paris after her first visit to London.

314 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

By the irony of fate her sick-room at Bordeaux was filled with
flowers worth literally thousands of pounds, that had been sent
from all quarters of France by her worshippers.

" If I only had the money these flowers cost ! " she remarked
resignedly.

The war was on, and the ambulance in which she was being
taken to the station on her way back to Paris overtook regiment
after regiment of soldiers on their way to the Front.

" La glorieuse blessee," the papers called her, and the soldiers
thronged about the ambulance and her car on the train, taking the
flowers that decorated their bayonets and throwing them at the
indomitable genius who sat inside it with tears in her eyes.

Within six months Sarah herself was at the Front, playing from
an armchair for the poilus who were battling to check the invader.

She was then seventy-one years old.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 315

CHAPTER XXXI

When she was asked by a journalist in 1898 to describe her
" ideal " Sarah Bernhardt replied :

" My ideal ? But I am still pursuing it ! I shall pursue it
until my last hour, and I feel that in the supreme moment I
shall know the certainty of attaining it beyond the tomb."

In these few words lie the expression of Sarah Bernhardt 's
whole life.

Indefinable as perhaps her ideal was, it was the star that guided
her throughout her long career. It was that grasping after the
unattainable, that desire to take the one more step ahead, that
cuUe du parfait, as Rostand expressed it, that inspired her battles
and illuminated her art.

Shortly after she moved to the Boulevard Pereire, she pur-
chased the Fort des Poulains, on Belle Isle-sur-Mer, on the coast
of Brittany, and here she spent the summers of her convalescence,
surrounded by faithful friends and members of her family.

She built a magnificent house at Belle Isle, and another
building on the farm adjoining it. This she called " Sarah's
Fort," and it was consecrated to the great tragedienne. Here
she would spend hours in the company of her son, or with Jules

3i6 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

Lemaitre, or some other trusted friend, and here she was safe
from the cares and worries of her business in PariS' — for she
still retained the active management of the Theatre Sarah
Bernhardt.

" It is," said the Illustration recently, " with a real sentiment
of satisfaction that we learn that the Fort des Poulains, the property
of Madame Sarah Bernhardt at Belle Isle, is to become a museum
consecrated to the great tragedienne and is not to become a tourist
hotel and dancing-place, as had been reported. By a sentiment of
respect and piety, the group which has purchased the property
has so decided. They will try to bring to the property a collec-
tion of souvenirs of the great artiste, and tourists will thus be
able to visit the surroundings which were so dear to Sarah Bern-
hardt's heart. . . . What souvenirs are attached to Belle Isle,
where La Princesse Lointaine will sleep one day perhaps her last
repose ! "

Once when in Florida, Sarah expressed the desire to hunt an
alligator. There was no alligator in that region, and the local
admirers of the artiste were in despair until it was remembered
that the druggist of the town possessed a baby alligator, which at
the moment (it being winter) was tranquilly asleep.

He consented to give the creature for the purposes of the hunt,
and it was placed secretly in a marsh near-by. The next day
Sarah was told that the hunt had been organised. She was
delighted beyond measure and gaily walked the five miles to
the spot, where the sleeping alligator was captured without any
difficulty.

Maurice Bernhardt was at Belle Isle at the time and Sarah
sent him the alligator, together with a letter telling her son that he

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 317

did not need to be afraid of it, for it was a " quiet little thing "
and had not even made a move since it had been caught.

But, unfortunately, when the alligator arrived at Belle Isle,
it was its time to wake up, and it became a formidable customer —
so dangerous, in fact, that before Sarah could arrive to view her
capture in its new home it had to be killed.

Sarah had a regular colony of dogs, horses, and birds on the
farm.

After the war she announced her intention of returning to
the stage, one-legged though she was. There was a chorus of
protest, which, however, had no effect upon her.

Money had to be earned, and it seemed as though she was the
only member of the family who could earn it ! So she returned
to the stage, in Athalie, and was given on the opening night what
was possibly the greatest ovation of her career.

Then Louis Verneuil, a talented young poet who had married
her beautiful grand-daughter Lysiane, wrote a play specially
for her — Daniel. It was the story of a young author, victim of
opium. In it Sarah had no need to move, but spoke her lines
sitting in an armchair and lying on a couch. Even thus, her
tremendous personality and her magnificent voice dominated the
house.

Sarah next played in a one-act play, Le Vitrail, by Rene
Fauchois, at the Alhambra. Then she produced Regine Armand,
and, finally, created La Gloire, by Maurice Rostand.

Not content with this almost superhuman labour, she was
arranging to play with the Guitrys, at the Theatre Edouard VII.
when, just before Christmas 1922, she was seized with an attack
of her old enemy, uremia.

3i8 Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her

I was among those who called at the little house in the Boule-
vard Pereire on the night of December 31, when it was thought
that she must die. But she rallied, and though all her friends
and her family and she herself knew that it was but a temporary
reprieve, she insisted on going back to work. Not this time,
on the stage, but in her own house before the motion-picture
camera.

A syndicate organised by a young American in Paris and
directed by another American, Leon Abrams, made her an offer of,
I think it was, 5,000 francs per day. She was, as usual, penniless,
and the offer was a godsend.

She posed for the film, with her chimpanzee, in the studio at
the rear of her house.

So needy was she that, just before lapsing into unconscious-
ness for the last time, she demanded that the moving-picture men
should be admitted to the bedchamber.

" They can film me in bed," she said, her voice scarcely
audible, so weak was she. " Now, don't object," as Professor
Vidal remonstrated, "they pay me 5,000 francs each time I pose ! "

Her insistence on fulfilling her contract to play in this cinema
play was, according to the doctors, the cause of her last collapse.
It was more than her strength could stand. She was really
dying when she faced the camera on the last two occasions. But
her indomitable will triumphed over her body almost to the last,
and, until the dreadful malady paralysed her, she continued acting.

My tears are falling as I write these last lines. They are
difficult sentences to fashion. I am no poet, and words could not
add to the drama of that night when the divine Call-boy came for
Sarah Bernhardt.

Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her 319

She died at five minutes past eight o'clock, her snow-white
head pillowed in the arms of her son, Maurice.

"Be a good boy . . . Maurice." These were her last
words. . . . The curtain descended. . . .

That day, Monday, the twenty-sixth of March, Victor Hugo
died for a second time.

Even before she died, Sarah Bernhardt had outstripped Glory
and had become Legend.

Nothing of hers had faltered : not her intelligence, not her
heart, not her talent, not her genius. She was complete.

She was the glory and the light of the French theatre. The
light that is extinguished will not flame again. How dark it
seems !

Dead, she is greater than in life. WTio of us would not accept
her luminous night ?

Her epitaph, by Jacques Richepin :

1

CI-GIT SARAH
QUI SURVIVRA

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